"Medicine and Art: Imaging a Future for Life and Love"

View of the video installation by Magnus Wallin (Excercise Parade, 2001, double backprojection, 3-D animated video). Image courtesy Galerie Nordenhake, Berlin

Despite its generic sounding title the Mori Art Museum’s current show insightfully combines the old (Leonardo da Vinci) and the new (Damien Hirst), medical equipment and art, Nihonga painting and contemporary installations. The common tissue here, literally, is the human body—its make-up, its existence and functions, its alteration and deterioration.

The exhibition is immensely enjoyable as it presents more than a mere glimpse into the ways artists see humans and humanity. Their approaches, that run a gamut from admiration to pity, from curiosity to detachment, inevitably provoke a similar range of emotions in the visitors to the show. Many instances that cause such poignant reactions, not surprisingly, involve death, children and premature aging: Walter Schels’ sullen photographs of an 18 month-old shortly before and immediately after her death (2004) and Patricia Piccinini’s prematurely aged Game Boys (2002) are just two examples. On the opposite end of the spectrum is Gilles Barbier's cheeky installation of the aged superheroes (L'Hospice, 2002), featuring saggy and wrinkly Wonderwoman, prone Captan America fit with an i.v., Superman supported by a walker and the Catwoman, catnapping in front of the turned off television.

Because the three sections of the show emphasize primarily the subject matter of the works, those who come in hopes of unadulterated aesthetic experiences from the art featured alongside various tomes on anatomy and scores of prosthetic limbs might end up disappointed. To be sure, looking through the medical artifacts (most of them from the Wellcome Trust collection) requires a different mode of seeing from that suitable for conceptual art, pen drawings by Leonardo, or Nihonga painting. The show’s visual schmorgesborg of art and manufactured articles forces the viewers to arbitrate continuously between their thinking and their emotions. Ironically, it is our very humanity that hinders our perception. The emotional stakes make it next to impossible to step back and allow for a duly museum detachment.

A tip: when you make it to Lee Byung Ho’s 2009 Vanitas Bust in the room before last (right next to the Game Boys), take your time looking at the bust. The show is on through February 28, 2010.

Mario García Torres, "Unspoken Dailies"

Mario Garcia Torres, “Unspoken Dailies”, 2003-2009, 16mm black and white film, 66 min. Courtesy of Taka Ishii Gallery

Torres' feature length movie contains no words. Nor does it need to. This tribute to the enigmatic Dutch artist Bas Jan Ader who is as well known for his work on celluloid as for his mysterious disappearance in the aftermath of an attempted crossing of the Atlantic in a 12 foot boat tackles memory and time. The 16mm movie recalls Ader's on-camera falls and introvert close-ups, but it goes a step further, taking the viewers into the realms of the unsaid and the undone.

The movie, shot in real time, features Mexican actor Diego Luna well-known from his mainstream works (Y tu mama también, 2001, Milk, 2008). In a simulation of a prolonged screen test Luna was handed a script (based on Torres' academic paper "Around Bas Jan Ader" presented at a conference in 2004) and is placed in a sparsely furnished space with only a table, a chair, a plant, a wall clock (the very one installed in the galleries, featured in the photo above), and a glass of water. The paper is now a script, and the actor has been instructed to read it, silently, for the first time, as the camera rolled. While it might not seem as a premise for the most exciting 66 minutes ever spent, the movie proves otherwise. Punctuated with Luna's subtle expressions, the inevitable yet titillating advancement of the clock's hands, and an original score by Alejandro Ross, it makes for a very engaged viewing. Shot by Alexis Zabé. I suggest that before going to see the feature you check out some of Bas Jas Ader's work here.

This is Torres's second solo show in Japan, but this young conceptual artist had already made a reputation for himself both in Europe and the US. A graduate of the California Institute of the Arts (2005), Torres lists Jeu de Paume (2009), Kunsthalle Zurich (2008) and Stedelijk Museum (2007) among others on the list of solo exhibition venues.

On through December 12 at the Taka Ishii gallery. Screenings at 13:00, 15:00 and 18:00 daily.

Shinro Ohtake Review/Artforum

Beach 8
2009
Oil, oilstick, acrylic, printed matter, color copy, sticker, sand, seeds, varnish, metal and acrylic board in custom frame
42.8 x 35.3 cm

Courtesy of Take Ninagawa and the artist

My review of Shinro Ohtake's "Shell & Occupy 4" is now up on the Artforum page.

Openings: Kiyosumi and Shirokane Art Complexes

Another night of openings in the Kiyosumi and Shirokane art complexes. Tomio Koyama Gallery presented video works of the Daiwa Foundation Art Prize winner Marcus Coates. His video work Dawn Chorus (2007) is a set up of several screens that show people in their natural habitat lipsynching bird songs recorded in the woodlands of Northern England.

One floor below hiromiyoshii gallery inaugurated an exhibition of Takehito Koganezawa's planetary photography and sculptures, with a separate little room devoted to his earlier drawings and sketches.

The Kodama Gallery showed Kenji Nohara's painting, sculpture and 3D objects. My favorite was a souvenir mask he brought back from Mexico. The gimpish-looking silver mask, lined with pieces of mirror fragments, was suspended on the little clothing rack.

Nanzuka Underground had a selection of large and colorful canvas by the veteran artist Keiichi Tanaami. The story depicted in the paintings was inspired by traditional Chinese narratives and history.

On the opposite end of the visual scale were Etsuko Fukaya's minutely detailed prints at the Yamomoto Gendai gallery.

Most shows will be on through the first week of December. Please refer to galleries' sites for details.

Haruki Ogawa’s “Irritated Figures”

Ogawa’s first solo show at the Frantic Gallery (formerly known as art project frantic) is an impressive start for the twenty four year old artist. His painting thrives on clashing the opposites: dense, clustered fragments and open spaces, impasto brushwork and mirror-smooth varnished surfaces, figuration and rhythmical patches of color.

The largest work in the exhibition “Emphasizing the One Who is Absent” (2009) is positioned, both physically and metaphorically, as a portal into the Ogawa's meta-spaces. This painting-within-a-painting shows an empty white chair set against the background of another canvas that is in the process of falling apart. Pigments explode, smudge off, lift away and the three-dimensional space around the chair is taken over by a barrage of color and action. Juxtoposing the trompe l’oil of the chair with the representations of painterly markings, shapes and traces, Ogawa constructs his own pictorial space, and a temperamental one at that.

For as long as you look at the paintings they challenge and engage, not allowing a moment of the prerequisite calm that would make them into passive objects of your gaze. Practically all the pieces in the exhibition give the impression that the action inside and outside the canvas’ transpires regardless of the viewer's presence. This is most visible in the series of works where animals (rabbits, tigers, frogs) are shown as they escape the confines of their respective paintings only to look back so they can tease the now barren canvas.

Irritated Figures is curated by Rodion Trofimchenko whose dynamic interpretation of Ogawa’s work goes beyond simply framing the art, and functions as a parallel text of sorts, at once obfuscating and enlightening. As Trofimchenko explains, the irritated images square the artist against both Japanese pop culture and Japanese contemporary art. I must agree that Ogawa’s work for all his incorporation of the traditional Japanese technique and design, at least as they appear in the final product, is rooted in Conceptual art. The best example of this is the stunning silk screen/painting “Play on his own” that contains the artist’s likeness from some twenty two years before and, hovering above his head, a cluster of objects and color markings, an intense vision of a memory (or a premonition) fully unfolded in the pendant painting the “Accumulation of Rhythms” (both 2009).

The works in the exhibition show a clear progression from the earlier pieces that engage mid-career Francis Bacon, to the later spatial gymnastics in “Emphasizing the one who is absent” and the “Accumulation of Rhythms.” Here, of course, fingers could point to Wassily Kandinsky’s experiments circa 1915, but Ogawa’s formalist conceptualism so evident in the 2009 “Floating Rhythm” puts his exploding colors and irritated figures into a category of their own. Ogawa is certainly one young artist to watch.

On view through November 21, 2009.

Images: Emphasizing the one, who is absent/不在者は主張する, 2009, oil/alkyd/watercolor on canvas, 145.5x145.5 (top), Floating Rythm/浮遊するリズム 2009, watercolor/oil/alkyd/pencil on canvas, 80.8x80.8 (middle); Runaway/脱走者, 2009, silkscreen/alkyd/oil on canvas, 112x162 (bottom). Images courtesy of the gallery.

Art and Beer: Kunst Oktoberfest

Halloween was the perfect day to hop on the bus (two buses, to be precise) that were circling the Chuo-ku and Ginza galleries, and see a whole lots of art in a very short time. Twenty six galleries in all, ranging from the more established Galerie Sho Contemporary, nichido contemporary and Koyanagi, to name a few, to the younger Frantic, Wada and CASHI hosted a stream of art and beer lovers. The buses, as it could be expected, ran right on schedule, stopping at each gallery every twenty minutes to give just enough time to skim an exhibition, or allowing to stay longer if the show was bigger or particularly interesting. Due to a trick-or-treating appointment later in the evening I was only able to take advantage of the south route and see about half of the galleries. Here is my short report.

The sculpture of the girl holding a goose by its paws is among several humorous fairy tale fantasies by Hiroshi Ohashi, his works could be seen at Wada Fine Arts in Tsukiji. A disturbing twist on the fairy tale motif is offered by Ryu Ebato's Emotion works shown at the ART★AIGA in Hachibori. The gallery website describes her paintings as "comical, cute, [and] a little frighten[ed]." The work featured on the Aiga homepage shows Ebato's protagonist activating the glowing charcoals of her eyes and her agape mouth by a twofold pull on the tresses, thus hitting a hollow note amplified by the transparent layer of acrylic set on unprimed canvas.

On the other end of the visual/sensory spectrum is Ren Jing's solo exhibition. The young Chinese artist, whose first show in Japan is hosted by Unseal Contemporary, mixes vestiges of Communism (red kerchiefs around girls' necks) with pain and violence (red eyes, blood smears on girls' faces). His very accomplished red paintings bring to mind Filip Maliavin's visions in red, only here the color, rather ominously, links political and sexual bondage.

A floor above Unseal Contemporary is the Frantic Gallery (formerly Art Project Frantic), whose first showing of Haruki Ogawa's Irritated Figures will be the subject of a separate blog entry. This show will be on through November 21st—a definite must-see.

Some very interesting figurative works were in the group show of Clara Desire, Masako and Motoko Otsuki at Galerie Sho Contemporary. Taguchi fine art was featuring Simon Morley's word paintings, and Arataniurano presented Izumi Keiji's wood and epoxy sculptures of figures with fantastic(al) nature-themed outgrowths (now waterfalls, now trees, now rocks) in all sorts of places. The Taguchi and Arataniurano exhibitions will only be on for another week, through October 7th.

Art-filled and fun-filled day indeed, my only wish it could be spread over the whole weekend to keep the aesthetic fatigue at bay.