I have spent one month at Tokyo Wonder Site in order to research the local art scene. Which is of course an unrealistic ambition and megalomaniac fantasy within such a short time frame. Plus, no “scene” can ever be comprehended by sitting down with individuals in a room alone. No matter how deep the exchange.
A wholesome experience includes close-up observations of this glimmering monolith that is constantly changing its shape and content and still remains recognizable. It takes intense field research, plunging in, visiting not only exhibitions, openings and artist talks, which I did, but also hanging out after the
official part is over. Sitting in bars, discos, do home visits, join cigarettes and ping-pong games and picnics in parks. The latter few I was not too good at, being five months pregnant I surely felt my energy limits.
What I did, though, was to meet with about thirty artists for portfolio reviews. I chose them after a rigorous research time of almost three weeks where I was wandering around Tokyo visiting galleries, museum and art spaces, talked to curators and museum directors to figure out who is in and who is not, what names where spilled at me and what was left unsaid. I worked through all the portfolios at Tokyo Wonder Site and received many useful tips from its curatorial team. I did not have the energy to go and visit all of the short listed artists in their respective studios in Tokyo and outside of it, which would have surely been critical and insightful with regard to the working context and living conditions of each one of them. Lucky enough, most of the artists could come out to meet me in Shibuya. We met at Tokyo Wonder Site where we discussed their work and exchanged ideas of the role of the artist in Japanese society today. Mostly with a translator sitting in with us.
It was interesting to learn how it seems to be much harder for Japanese artists (than for Swiss ones) to position themselves in society. Maybe I overlooked it, or it got lost in the translation but it seemed to me that there was only one door they all wanted to enter the art world, and that door did not read “resistance”. One of them mentioned the need to be different as an artist, and he explained to me how he would discover little things about him, habits, that he trained himself in in order to develop something like another view on things, to separate himself from the mass – like working at night only or cycling to avoid the masses. For most of them this step away from something like an unquestioned authority came natural to a certain extend, while it seemed that a veil of obedience still clung to their deepest sense of being, more of a guilt (or a habit?) than a responsibility towards society that they could not free themselves off. One artist very bluntly explained to me that it is hard to think independently, against the stream, as a creative islander and still move unharmed and joyfully in the Japanese society. The contemporary Japanese artist is still busying her/himself with aesthetics, not social or political dis/engagement, or the suggestion of alternatives to the society he/she lives in. Although global topics like ecology, cultural practices and new social needs are present in the art world; they appear to be set by the ones who entertain the scene financially. But maybe that is not so different anywhere else in the world, and it is especially transparent in countries with relatively young contemporary art scenes.
Time was the one single topic almost every artist had a take on, and not seldom a personal philosophy to share with me. An abundance of patience can be tracked or sensed in the young Japanese art, a deep love for time and duration, repetition and private historisization. There seemed to be no rush, and hardly any loudness expressed. Rarely I could find some cracks and something like violence shining through the colors and detailed arrangements of lines and thoughts. And where something dark was expressed it was laid out in exuberant beauty and precision – evoking an unnerving blindness in the viewer, a hunger to understand, to be allowed to enter the secret. There is an enormous quality in that, the gift of calmness given to the onlooker. Maybe it also comments on the fact that the Japanese artists still need to learn to bite the hand that feeds them. But how is art made political in Japan, then? As was pointed out to me, in contrast to Western style, Japanese tradition expresses what cannot be said. And maybe something like resistance and critique, which we are so ridiculously good at uttering in the West, is actually too blunt to transgress into a piece of art? I would not necessarily agree with that, nor would most artists I met.
The role of the artist in Japanese society I cannot conclude from the numerous but brief conversations I took pleasure in. All the same, it is a residence like the one I was so fortunate to benefit from at Tokyo Wonder Site that helps rising more refined and fastidious questions about this topic, it is a residency like this that stirs curiosity and respect for each other, which I in general deem more important than understanding.
These are the people I met:
Daisuke Nagaoka (http://yukikokawase.free.fr/Daisuke%20Nagaoka.htm). Daisuke told me that he was interested in the relationship of animal and human being, or rather the unnameable space or moment when one transforms into the other, where one is the other. He is interested in the damage these two entities or realms can do to each other. Another focus are his drawing/erasing pieces that he shows as short movies. With these he draws and immediately eliminates and changes certain aspects of it, the erasure is comparable to the cutting in a move, but softer and more partial. All the same, the effect is a change of scene and composition.
Chikara Matsumoto (http://www.2dk.net/urbanlenz/artists/e-Chikara.html) often draws ghosts. He nurtures his very own understanding of time, night and day. Chikara told me that it is essential for him to be awake at night and cycle through the city in order to get a chance to look at things how they are when all the hustle and bustle is over, and the human being is gone. It is his form of soft revolution against a very strict and authoritarian societal norm most Japanese must follow.
His animation work is lyrical and translunary. Matsumoto shot hundreds of hand-painted pieces by time-release to make the animation, which made the response and the motion magically wrap around each other. The wired but charming characters create the unique world of picture story books you read in childhood. "The invisible, but certainly existing important things. The ghosts in my animation admittedly float there and sing a song which is a mixture of anxiety and hope."
Tabata Kouichi (http://www.kouichitabata.com) produces next to paintings, collages and new forms of media, short movies that are based on drawings. The content is mostly very focused and uncomplicated - we see a fly, or a flower. It is his decision on the amount of frames and the time span, in which they are shown that translates the drawings into delicately trembling icons of timelessness and beauty.
Aiko Miyanaga (http://www.aiko-m.com/) and I met when I have seen here work already in two places, in a solo show at the xx gallery, and at the NACT, where she was part of an emerging artist show. "The way my creation shifts unveils the fragility and uncertainty of the moment, and tells us how powerful our memory can be". Miyanaga specializes in site-specific installations. While she chooses materials and media according to the occasion, her most typical and original material of choice is naphthalene. She uses the material to form life-sized shoes, hats or cell phones, which she then places in glass cases on top of light boxes or other devices that radiate heat, as a result of which the objects slowly evaporate. These works are made of the same material as mothballs, which gradually loses shape and ultimately disappears. Miyanaga lets her works evaporate, however this doesn't mean that she just puts them somewhere and leaves the rest to fate. As she controls the time it takes for a work to disappear depending on the duration of the respective exhibition, there are naturally works that exist for just a few days, and others that stay in shape up to the last day of the event. It also happens that things that have been hidden inside the white objects become visible toward the end of an exhibition. In all cases, seeing how the glass cases are gradually covered with pure white crystals is a truly beautiful sight. In the show I saw at NACT she had old cupboards piled up several meters high and placed some hand-made pots in them.
Ken Hamaguchi, pinter
Kyoko Ebata ( http://kyokoebata.blogspot.com/). SSamzie Space in Seoul in Conjunction with Tokyo Wonder Site's Bilateral Exchange Residency Program. result of accumulated lifetime experience of the individual concerned.
Miki Kubota (http://www.hpfrance.com/En/Art/) who refurbishes furniture by stripping it off its threedimensionality and lies it out flat or hangs it on the wall, like a squashed or ran over and the neatly assorted pray. This working process translates the furniture into a new object or subject - like an enormous bug for instance.
Let me start off with the list of artists, curators and museum directors I was so lucky to meet. Teppei Kaneuji's large scale exhibition and first solo show "melting city/empty forest" I saw at the Yokahama Art Museum (http://www.yaf.or.jp/yma/index.php), that showcases younger Japanese artists next to its collection exhibitions. His installation art concerns itself with silhouettes and boundaries. ooze, bleed and blue are prominent elements in Japanese art. The contours of letters in calligraphy, and smudges in ink painting are indispensible techniques when it comes to expressing the Japanese conection of time and space. It is basically the same thing that the blots' contours and the construction they produce do for Kaneuji, writes Yusaku Imamura, director of Tokyo Wondersite. The artist is also treasuring the idea of small events froming a huge phenomenon. http://teppeikaneuji.com/kaneuji_works.html
Daisuke Fukunaga (www.geocities.jp/mihokanno1980/fukunaga.html) paints the most ragged scenes and the objects left behind. Shabby empty lots, worn-out mops, and wastes… Neither human figure nor even traces are present in Fukunaga's paintings. Instead, the scenes and objects exist themselves, as if they have stripped away the use-values that are usually attached to them, and bizarreness and some kind of attractive madness can be sensed from them.
Keisuke Kondo, 2007 Tokyo Wonder Site.
Mayuko Yoshida, filled a small attic room with long white paper strips that almost completely cover up a wooden chair under them. The chair changes into something that fights for its life, that desperately wants to breath. The light paper seems all of a sudden beastly and painful, while the heavy material of the wooden chair appears fragile, endangered. Mayuko told me that she concerns herself with words, the space between them and the things that disappear when we use words. She translated her fascination with that topic into an installation containing a black, laid table. Laid out were texts written in Braille and spoons filled with the ashes of that same text. This piece brings together different works that the artist was unable to put into words. This shows a specific Japanese tradition where, unlike in the West, the things are shown which cannot be named.
Dig & Bury Yuji Oda, Nobuhiko Terasawa (www.digandbury.jp, studio BUM) are a funnybunch of two artists who do it the other way. They don't look for white cubes and oher spaces to show their work. Far more important to them is the feeling that they cross boundaries, the limitations of their culture, a geographical border or the idea of art at large. They are good communicators, with wild ideas and a lot of energy. Their practice contains sth. that is rather rare in Japan, it is socially engaged, political and humorous (too take off the edges). Where American socially engaged art feels weighty, or if doen badly, heavy-handed, Japan practices often seem to feel the urge to laugh off or ridicule its own content, which must not be mixed up with a lack of seriosity or meaningfulness. The artist xxexplained to me that most contemporary art from Japan made by young Japanese does not dare yet to oppose the tight social structures, the expectancy of anyone to provide to the smooth stream – every one is a drop that leads into the same river, so said by Jürgen Staack (www.juergenstaack.com/), a German artist who resided at TWS with me.
Kouichi Tabata, www.kouichitabata.com, from painting to animation to drawing in one frame, movement without motion.
Takashi Kuribayashi http://www.takakuri.net/, http://ameblo.jp/takakuri/, coceworks.com, lived in Germany, speaks German. He lives in Kamakura outside of Tokyo where he can afford a big studio place. He builds whole biotops including animals and plants into existing museum structures. His work unifies a strong care for the environment, a fierce joy to attack any space given and a intrusive sense of humor.
Tatzu Nishi (http://www.tatzunishi.net) lives in Berlin. He showed at ARATANIURANO (www.arataniurano.com). His installation art turns public items like light posts or monumental sculptures in a park into elements that belong to a private space. he does so by building a space around the object and closing it in with an intimate environment, mostly a mundane one, like a living room, or a kitchen. I met Tatzu at TWS where he carried his A3 catalogue of his latest work with him, and at the opening of his show. He had a street lamp installed so it would move through two of the gallery walls. The center piece was more of a mock instalation of his big pieces that he does in specific city areas, parks and other public spaces. (PS: He was surrounded by female fans and talked in a loud and exhilarated voice when we exchange our personal data.)
Naoko Shiokawa was showing a series of photos from her own past in the Hongo exhibition space. She transformed them into monochrome images, blew them up and printed them on fabric. Then she sewed black pearls on the white parts and white pearls on the black parts, turning these memories into blurry images of uncertain moments of the past. The technique is more striking then the effect on site.
Soya Arakawa, socially engaged art (www.tacolv.com), we briefly talked at an opening at the French Embassy.
Ken Hamaguchi, whom I got to know through my friend Maki Sasaki. He depicts the stereotypical blond ind traditional Japanese bondage. His paintings appear inspired and tacky at the same time. Ken pointed out two books to me, both edited by Yuki Yamaguchi, an art lover who is invested in the collecting and presenting of contemporary Japanese art to a wider audience. The books Ken handed over to me carry the enthusing itles "A Guide to contemporary Japanese Art" and "The Power of contemporary Japanese Art". I believe that she is one of the rare people who put out such books in English.
Elisabeth, magegf@yahoo.com moved away to London.
Toru Kuwakubo (http://www.galeriedavidegallo.com/index.php?id=exhibition_kuwakubo, kuwakubo@yahoo.co.jp) is a painter that is capable of sharing his wonderful world of sarcastic, sad, entertaining scenes where people busy themselves standing in the outside, a landscape with often mundane actions. The pure solidity and sincerity of the scenes and the unique arrangament of layers makes his paintings like the "Men with the white boxes", or "Dig, dig, dig" spread a unique mix of humor, sadness and senseless endeavor.
Yoshiaki Kaihatsu (http://www.yoshiakikaihatsu.com/) Performance
Jun Kitagawa (www.kitagawajun.com)
Jun Kitagawa (www.kitagawajun.com)
Jun Kitagawa (www.kitagawajun.com)
Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, www.mot-art-museum.jp: Ryoji Ikeda +/- (the infinite between 0 and 1) escaped my interest. It seemed that size mattered a bit too much fo rthis work in order to be captivating, and once blown up in that dimension, which it well might deserve, the work became decoration. A wallpaper of changing numbers and current data that should impress us by the pure fact that all this information is the expression of the "now", of something that is or happens at that very moment when we stand in front of it, and is brought to our awareness as impenetrable data mesmerizing due to its enormous abundance. Some rooms we could only enter with our shoes taken off.
We didn't make it, I don't remember whether Ryosuke Hara cancelled on me, or I on him, unfortunately.
Instead I met with the German artist Bodo Korsig (http://www.korsig.com/) several times and went to his show at Makii Masaru Fine Arts, where I met Kaori Satou, the gallery manager.
I talked to the Sawako Fukai, the manager of G/P Gallery, they very actively promote photography and regularly organize public portfolio reviews for curators.
Leo Kadele, http://leokadele.googlepages.com, www.maxartfest.com, director, is an artist from Croatia who tested the Japanese public with his playful and positively confrontative performances.
Yoshioki Kaihatsu
Ryota Katsukura, photographer, I met this talented artist at the portfolio review at TWS Hongo. A lot of fantastic portfolios were laid out in a much too small and scorching space. The ambiance was exhilarated and when I got there the students and artists where starting to open a few bottles shaking off the day's nervousness.
The artist Shinji Ohmaki whose work I have studied carefully in many catalogues, I did not meet. The same accounts for Meo Saito whose work is most impressive, an mind-blowing testament to the Japan of the past and the present. Told in a contemporary painting style and framed by intelligent as well as most delicate means of form – producing a sheer unbearable beauty of content and wisdom. The preparation per painting of her "Wreath"-series takes her over a month per piece, applying over twenty layers of pigment, carbonic acid and glue to the fabric. Her paintings are so painstakingly executed that her work has been blown up for teh show at NACT.
I saw their work but missed to meet them in person due to my being sick at the Open Studios event: Daisuke Fukunaga, Soshiro Matsunaga, Masaya Chiba, Yosuke Amemiya
Kyoko Jimbo, curator, Tokyo Metropolitain Museum of Photography.
One of the most surprising and uplifting encounters was my meeting with Mr. Taro Amano, Chief curator at Yokohama Art Museum, and Ms. Eriko Osaka, director at the Yokohama Museum of Art. They both showed a great interest in my experience as the director of the Kunsthalle Luzern and the chance to network. Ms. Osaka was off to the Venice Biennale the next day. There and back in 3 days, I believe. Yokohama Museum of Art was founded in 1989, is located in the futuristic Minato Mirai 21 district of Yokohama city next to the Yokohama Landmark Tower, the tallest building in Japan. The also co-curate the Yokohama Triennale.
Taro took me to the exciting BankArt (www.bankart1929.com) venue where i met the director, Osamu Ikeda, who showed me around in these loft premises at the harbor of Yokohama. A very trendy and attractive spot entailing a restaurant and outside bar and performance area. The place also hosts a school:
The unique aspect of BankART’s school is not simply
the course offerings so much as its status as an
accredited educational institution, albeit a small one.
Eight units accumulated over a two-month period earn
one credit. Classes meet daily Monday thru Saturday in
small groups of no more than twenty people. Featuring
more advanced classes at the lifelong learning and
graduate levels, the school aspires to serve as a
modern-day “temple school,” or terakoya, a Buddhist
educational facility popular in the Edo period (1603-
1868) that encouraged high standards and diverse
learning. To date, BankART has offered 80 courses to
over 1000 students taught by 241 instructors and guest
lecturers. Collaboration among students and between
teachers and students is a vital dimension of the
program. In a seminar on art criticism, for example,
students produce independent works of criticism, and
in a photography course, they hold a group exhibition.
The classes foster teamwork, and even after these
classes come to an end, relationships and artistic
exchange continue.
I met with Peter Nelson, responsible for Cultural and Public affairs at the Swiss Embassy, who was just about to leave his position for Washington. He told me how different it was in Japan from Switzerland to set up an exhibition coming from abroad and finding the venue and means for it. Relation building is key, one has to meet people over and over, to get a sense whom one has to talk to to make things happen and who is just there to get a sense of who you are. There are only a few residence places in Japan too, the general interest in collaborations with foreign institutes varies a lot. The Swiss Embassy is critically involved in suggesting creators-in-residence to TWS, as well as networking between Switzerland and Japan in general, or Tokyo specifically.
I met Yayoi Motohashi-Mäki-Mantila, curator at the National Art Center Tokyo (http://www.nact.jp/english/index.html), in one of the spacious office hallways. We had tea and discussed the goals and desires of the National Art Center Tokyo comparing it to the Kunsthalle Luzern and other places abroad. Yayoi and I both were pregnant when we met, she was about to go into mother leave only about two days later to return only after a year. I was impressed and envy her, thinking of the meagre 14 weeks of mothers' leave I was looking into.
My heartfelt thanks go out to Yusaku Imamura, Director/Counselor on Special Issues to the Governor Tokyo Metropolitan Government, Kayoko Iemura, Director of Arts Program and Residency Division – thanks for having me at your intriguing institute. Miwa Takamura, Arts Program Section, Yoshie Irie, Arts Program Section, and Miyoko Hoshino, Chief of Residency Program Curatorial Section, Azumi Akai, Curatorial Program, and the artist who work for TWS temporarily, I forgot his name – thanks for all the great guidance and tips that enriched my stay at TWS. And thanks to Taro for a wonderful spontaneous trip, and Hansjürg, the person who set this entire undertaking in motion. Atsushi Satake, hope to see you again, some time.
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