The 'airport departures hall' like space of MOT.
The Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo hosts its MOT Annual exhibition now, a show entitled 'From a World As Large As Life', showing works by five artists, Sayaka Akiyama, Izumi Kato, Yuri Shibata, Naoko Chiba, and Daisuke Nakayama. The explanatory texts explain how people today are increasingly isolated and mentally affected, even though surrounded by more information than ever before - a familiar line in many exhibitions these days. The artists works tend towards illustrating this thesis, rather than offer further questions about this state of affairs. It is certainly a question that has much relevance in Japan. I felt that each of the artists in the show offered perspectives on this topic, but rarely from beyond their own experience, space or codes. It thus felt somehow limited and curatorially folded in on itself. One often hears the phrase 'art of the four tatami mat' (being the size of a traditional micro living space) here, a reference to the often insular and self-healing tendencies in contemporary art from Japan. The relationships with otaku cultures are not incidental. I liked most of the works in the show, but it was perhaps the frameworks which the curator had placed over them (information oriented society, loss of bonds etc) that made me slightly frustrated. I think that there would be different ways to present and discuss such work - something which I think the critic Midori Matsui has endevoured to do and which will hopefully be 'tested' in her first curatorial exhibition project to open soon at Mito Art Tower. However, I enjoyed very much the new clumpy wood sculptures of Izumi Kato (below), which are like little alien babies. I could imagine a very large one looming over a Cure concert (note the flourescent eye shading/ Head on the Door period Cure).
Sayaka Akiyama's small delicate embroidered textiles and paper shards also stood out for me, being maps of her movements through the city. I read her practice as detournement, a playful criss crossing of the urban space, but this never seems to be highlighted.
The other exhibition currently on at MOT, is a retrospective of the political painter and illustrator Hiroshi Nakamura (b.1932). I had known of his work through a few of his famous 'reportage' period paintings from the post war era, when he painted various political struggles and incidents (below: '5th Sunagawa' 1955).
Nakamura's work contrasted with that in the MOT Annual, reminding me of the very strong socially engaged tendencies within post-war Japanese art history. The works, many in glass cases, certainly expressed their political and cultural contexts, but seemed to speak powerfully about issues still looming in Japan - particularly its relationship with the US. His later works seemed to borrow from manga and animation, rendering hybrid machines and super cool looking landscapes in black and white. His images from the 1960s and 70s, were particularly disorientating, showing traces of psychedelic influence and Pop. There were a couple of very nice works on wheels too, I think called something like Portable Landscapes (below).
They were like large wedge slices of cheddar cheese with a handle and little roller wheels. Inside was a 'frozen' collage landscape of various materials like clothes. Although in the show they were encased in glass cases, it forced me to visualise them being towed in the streets by Nakamura - which made me then dream about artists and briefcases, and how interesting it would be if all artists (and curators for that matter) also invented their own briefcases, and how this would create a city full of portable museums and overflowing desks - another kind of 'information-oriented society'.
Hi Roger,
you should add a link (+ small quote) to your interesting review in the comments section below those 2 events pages on TAB...
Posted by: Paul | January 24, 2007 at 05:08 PM
If you don't want to see this links, please email me dnsk_mail [ A t ] yahoo.com
And give URL of your site. Snxs.
Posted by: Stive Angelo | August 24, 2007 at 10:50 PM