On my first visit to the new gallery complex in Kiyosumi Shirakawa, just east of the Sumida River I had the opportunity to see two exhibitions which displayed tendencies towards scattered, psychedelic installation. The new complex itself is located on the top three floors of a large warehouse next to a cement factory and houses Tomio Koyama Gallery, Hiromi Yoshii Gallery and Taka Ishii Gallery amongst others.
The gallery building is to the left.
Psychedelic installers Assume Vivid Astro Focus, who have been very much active over the past few years, made a signature style installation in Hiromi Yoshii gallery. On entering the space through rickety wooden doors, a gallery assistant offered me a pair of 3D plastic spectacles through which to view the array of coloured lights and swirling projections. It always seems futile to try to mimic the effects of a psychedelic experience through such props as they can never do it justice. I suppose that was my overwhelming sense being in the space - which was also rather silent and of course an art gallery. Any feeling of jouissance or loss is smothered out by the references to different states of consciousness. Of course this is something which artists of all persuasions have grappled with for ages - I noticed that there was even a big exhibition at LA MOCA titled 'Ecstasy', which explored these relations.
I was though, sucked into a small side room which one entered via a hole, and which was full of bean bags. On a screen was projected a compilation of various short music videos, concert footage and odd nuggets from the 1960s through to the present. At least here, on the screen, one could see and hear people generally enjoying themselves.
I proceeded upstairs to Tomio Koyama gallery where young Japanese artist Satoshi Ohno was having a large one person exhibition. Satoshi is an MA painting student at Zokei Art University and I have tutored him for several years.
He uses black spray paint to mark lines across the space and had scrawled the word 'ACID' on several surfaces. Orange coloured powder pigment was arranged in decorative patterns on the floor amidst plastic orange hose, netting and many paintings and drawings. Compared to the Brazilian downstairs, Satoshi's psychedelia felt somehow stoic and repressed.
In the 1983 film 'Brainstorm' directed by Douglas Trumbull, a helmet device is invented which allows the wearer to experience other people's experiences. Technology today creeps ever closer to realising such ventures - already smart pills and supplements supposedly increase mental health and agility. The work of Mariko Mori has also utilised helmet-like devices which supposedly interact directly with the brain waves of the wearer. The late healing work of Brazilian Lygia Clark represents another powerful avenue of art practice.
Are we nearing a time when audiences will pop a mind altering pill to experience an art work as the maker intended? Are we entering a phase of direct synaptic plug-in art viewing? Does the exhibition and museum then become vast public workshop spaces and does the curator return to its etymological root - a carer, a trip-master?
The (heavily funded) Mariko Mori piece 'Wave Ufo' which appeared in the Arsnale @ the 51st Venice Biennale last year was very interesting but like much new media art, it seemed to leave me feeling like I was playing with a toy rather than interacting with an artwork. Though saying that, I did like the piece very much - it was very slick. 'Wave Ufo' left me feeling that new media still hasn't found its feet yet - that the whistles and bells on the technology interfere with a line of communication between artist and audience. Technology-based art perhaps is still in a birthing process and may remain this way until a wider audience has some sort understanding of new media vernacular. Perhaps more pieces like 'Wave Ufo' entering into (in your words) a "direct synaptic plug-in art viewing", may offer new media art the levels of interactivity previously unavailable? Perhaps it could alienate the audience further?
Will Mariko Mori's contribution to the Singporean Biennale this year be something similar, or are you at liberty to say?
Posted by: Albertious | April 15, 2006 at 11:23 PM
:-) yes roger, u are a trip master.
Posted by: George Chua | April 21, 2006 at 02:50 AM