Tag: Tokyo
Private Eyes are Watching You
Stillborn Skywhale
Art Aquarium
Yes, that’s right! You were not imagining things. Art aquarium. It looks like a goldfish circus in an event hall complete with bar and pole dancers in Japan. Hidetomo Kimura has been planning and co-ordinating this event every year since 2011. Does that make sense? Still not sure? Check out some of the many photos I took at the Eco Edo Nihonbashi Art Aquarium in Coredo’s Mitsui Hall in Tokyo.
If you look carefully, you can see a traditional crest or emblem for goldfish on top of these tanks near the entrance. That same emblem was also on banners, on walls, and other places.
The room was lit with coloured lights but otherwise dark. Everything and everybody looked different in the unusual lighting. Everybody was taking photos but making sure that their flash was turned off. Flash photography was not allowed. Some people forgot to change their settings at first, but their friends quickly reminded them. Glass, mirrors, black light…
Did I forget to mention that there were pole dancers and a DJ in the evening? There were also several bars selling different kinds of cocktails and beer.
If you wore a yukata, you might get a present or a discount.
This was one of a few events where you were allowed, if not encouraged, to take photos. People, even us, with cameras and smart phones were happily taking pictures everywhere.
Some people, regardless of age, just want to poke the creatures on display.
Goldfish were everywhere, including on kimono.
Goldfish lanterns or chochin were inside the hall and outside the building.
Goldfish were inside the bar!
Candy sculpture made of sugar was also a goldfish; sake bottles also had goldfish on them (behind the candy fish).
Sometimes the fish were art as exotic breeds of goldfish or kingyo; sometimes the aquariums were art; sometimes the presentation was the focus.
Images were projected on folding screens that acted as aquariums. Real fish looked like embroidered ones in gold and silver thread.
Doesn’t he look a bumpy, cuddly teddy-bear fish? My friend and I thought he was gross at first but we gradually began liking him. He also seemed aware of his presence, and dare I say it, smiling at us. 
Fish bums are so cute when they wiggle.
This poor guy was upside down all evening. His gills seemed enlarged or at least open much more widely than the other fish. I hope somebody in charge noticed his condition and helped him to live to swim another day.
For 1000 yen, I definitely got my money’s worth of art, tourism, and photo ops. It is on until September 23. Roppongi and Nogoya supposedly have similar art aquariums.
Reina Eto: Sirius About Dogs
Sorry! I could not resist a title that connected Reina Eto‘s love of dogs and her recent rise as a new star on the Tokyo art scene. She would deny this, but both the director of the Face to Face gallery and I agree that she has a bright future. We both met her at the 2014 Tokyo Art Fair and were struck by her unique style in a genre filled with many paintings that look similar to each other. She might be using a traditional method of painting called nihonga, but her work is fresh and contemporary.
For what it is worth, I purposefully took photos that were not exactly straight and cropped them slightly. I did not want to infringe upon her copyright. Anybody who is trying to determine what is a copy will certainly notice that her photos of her artwork will not be trimmed like the ones I am using. I also did not record the titles because I want people to investigate more by themselves. I also did not want to presume how she wanted to present her Japanese titles in the English alphabet or even how she wants them translated. I have simply added phrases to describe what each painting reminds me of.
This is one of my personal favourites. I love the composition and how the friendly nature of the dog is expressed despite our X-ray vision of the dog’s organs.
I want to call this one, “Truffle Dog”, because the dog’s face reminds me of a pig! This one and all of the paintings are quite small. This one is about 12 inches tall if I recall correctly.
This is a slightly closer look at the one of the two dogs racing. You can get a sense of its size in contrast with her face. Marsha Whiddon from Winnipeg once used dogs to represent the darker, animal nature of humans; Reina Eto paints dogs because she loves them and is familiar with their motion.She shows their inner organs to illustrate their inner mechanics and is not interested in trendy zombies. She tried painting horses, but their beauty is still too unfamiliar to her. Maybe in the future?
Reina Eto has also started painting humans in motion. Their bodies are healthy and powerful; they do not like zombies although we can see inside them. No body parts are falling off. They are in the pink of good health!
This one reminds me of shaman paintings down by artists from the First Nations in Canada, such as those of Inuit or Ojibway descent. One of the interesting things about this painting is that the black-and-white fur is made from iron filings. Eto graduated from art school but did not formally study nihonga painting. Perhaps because of that she is freer to break the rules. I have seen this happen before when painters enter a printmaking studio. Because it is not their major field of study, they are less concerned with process and more concerned with the final image. This might drive some technicians crazy, but the results are beautiful! This one has been growing on me.
Reina Eto is currently showing at the Face to Face gallery with two other young nihonga painters. Their paintings are also small but a bit more traditional than Eto’s work.
Doesn’t this one by Kyoko Enokidani remind you of Monet’s water lilies? This one is the most abstract. Her other paintings combine urban landscapes at night in similar blue shades.
Kansui Abe’s paintings seem traditional at first glance and remind you of landscapes that you might see in collections in Kyoto, but then you realize that fish are swimming between those mountains. That is a nice surprise!
Thank you to Kiyoshi Yamamoto and Reina Eto for an enjoyable Saturday afternoon filled with interesting and informative conversation. For those who want to take a look, I am afraid that Sunday, June 1, 2014 is your last chance to see this group show at the Face to Face gallery in Kichijoji, Tokyo. Don’t worry! Reina Eto plans to have a solo show here in the near future. If you plan to start a Japanese art collection, her prices are a bargain!
Acts of Indecency
Surprise, surprise! If this was on your wall in Tokyo, the police might show up on your doorstep after neighbourhood busybodies called in complaints about indecency. A friend in Tokyo had this happen to him this week. This incident was after a previous one when the police “randomly” stopped him on the street last week and asked to see his papers. (I question the randomness, because I wonder if he is being targeted by one of his neighbours.) This time they said somebody complained about the artwork and nude figure studies on his walls that could be seen through the windows. Yes, inside his house on his walls where they were not affecting the daily lives of anybody except him if he wanted to add a few more lines or change the display.
This incident seems even more preposterous if you have ever met this guy. You can tell by looking at him that he is a nice guy. He is not a hooligan or a thug; he is too old to be a delinquent but too young to be an eccentric old man. The apricot toy poodle on the leash must be what makes him look threatening, right? He is a family fan as well as the owner of a local business and popular instructor. He is also active in the arts community in Tokyo and regularly organizes events frequented by a wide variety of people. He is always willing to make new friends regardless of their skin colour, appearance, or sexual inclination; he accepts people as they are. He is the kind of guy that opens doors for people and offers a helping hand should you need it. Does he seem like the kind of guy you would want to call the cops about?
A busybody who lives nearby seems to have developed an unhealthy interest in my friend and his business. Perhaps they watched too many TV shows or news programmes coloured to suggest that most crime in Japan is committed by foreigners such as the Chinese triads and Iranian gangs in Ueno park. Yakuza? Who are they? It is also safer to report on foreigners and kick them out of the country rather than local gangs who could seek revenge. Or maybe somebody took those posters at the train station a little too seriously — signs that say Japan is on high alert and that ask you to report suspicious activity to the proper authorities. Do they think he is running a terrorist cell in a residential area? Are those foreigners or young children with their backpacks bringing in art supplies or parts to make a bomb? People forget that terrorism in Japan is usually homegrown, such as the Nihon Sekigun (Japanese Red Army) or Aum Shinrikyo. This racial profiling instigated by the media and the insular attitudes prevalent here have resulted in my friend being persecuted by some snoop with too much spare time on their hands.
The image that the media shows of a Japan where everything is acceptable, especially the unusual, is very different from everyday life here. Most people are quite conservative, especially in anything that might affect others. Remember the saying of square pegs in round holes or the one about bamboo having to be flexible or it will break in the wind? These sayings stress conformity. People go to great lengths to avoid mei-waku. This can mean anything from a slight inconvenience to outright harassment. You do not want to do anything that might trouble those around you in any way regardless of how much you yourself might be inconvenienced. The extremes that people are willing to go to avoid mei-waku can be mind-boggling at times. Please remember that most people here have dark hair, brown eyes, and often other physical characteristics. Students and employees wear uniforms, and dress codes that include hair length, hair colour, earrings, and so on are strictly enforced — even if somebody was born with a different colour of hair. The country appears homogenous on the surface despite the actuality of its long history of blending with Korean, Chinese, and other cultures. If one tiny thing is different, it stands out. Local communities and now apartments are often run by formalized groups consisting of local residents. They manage garbage disposal, local clean-ups, and neighbourly disputes. Participation is not mandatory, but opting out is greatly frowned upon. This also explains why so many young people from small towns gather in Harajuku to show off their outlandish outfits and why tinkerers create weird contraptions; these are socially acceptable ways to deal with individualism that do not reflect the nation as a whole.
This desire for conformity seems to be increasing in strength recently with more right-wing policies, increased xenophobia, and paranoia about terrorism and other bad things coming to this island country. Numerous articles and blogs discuss racism and prejudice in Japan in detail, so I won’t even try. I will say, however, that in a city where nude statues of women are found in every park and lewd posters of almost naked women are plastered everywhere, including on magazine covers and in trains where small children can see them, it is preposterous that somebody be persecuted for having figure studies of the human body on the walls of his art studio and school. Somebody is using his art to attack him, because it is not yet a crime to come from another country or have skin of a different colour — or maybe that should have been written as “no longer a crime”. Who really was committing acts of indecency here?
Note: I used my own drawings to illustrate this because I wanted to write this while I was still upset. I did not want to wait for him to have the free time to choose one of his beautiful drawings. My apologies to him. If you want to show him your support by sending a message or taking classes at his art school, he can be contacted at Ebisu Atleier d’Art. That website also includes a link to the school’s blog with more photos and information about the fine work he does on his own and in the classroom.
Puchi Buru or Petit Bourgeois
Gallery Crashers
A friend and I decided to have an adventure and crash an opening viewed on Tokyo Art Beat. Sachiko Kazama was having a solo show at the same time she was in the Roppongi Crossing show at the Mori Hills Art Center. This new show was not one of those blockbuster shows at one of the large galleries; it was at a tiny gallery called SNAC on one of the side streets near the Museum of Contemporary Art. The artwork at these small galleries often have more energy than that by old men who died years ago but are featured elsewhere. I wanted to check out the artwork and the space. I still need to find an artist-run centre that I like as much as the ones in Winnipeg and Fukuoka City.
It was already evening, and many shops were closed for the evening. Thank goodness for Google Maps, because we almost walked past the gallery! A small sign like those used by small restaurants or pubs was on the sidewalk. That was it. No large windows, nothing on display for the the general public walking by, and no large lettering in any language. As we walked by, the wooden door opened to show a bright, white room with people inside. It looked like a party but was it the one we were looking for? Would it be okay for us to walk in as strangers? We double checked the name on the sign and went in.
I knew we were in the right place as soon as I saw the black-and-white relief prints on the walls. They were much smaller and less complex than the ones in the Roppongi Crossings show. You had to look carefully and take a second glance to fully appreciate what she did.
What do I mean? It would have been very easy to walk past the print of Mount Fuji and the other of a car and dismiss them as typical prints done by every elderly Japanese man at every community centre in Japan, but the placement suggested a connection between the two. Sure enough when I read the information on the wall explaining the prints, I saw the same humour that I had seen before. These were not random choices; these were the nationalistic idols of Japan. We realized that we had to look at everything more carefully and not take anything for face value.
“My Grave”
She had taken anonymous-looking photos from newspapers and used them for her own purposes. A group of pictures from the real-estate section were beside bar graphs that echoed the shapes of the buildings being sold. Why? Think. What else is often represented with bar graphs? Income, financial growth, and other economic activities. Pictures of Japanese graves? Well, funerals and graves are very expensive. People sometimes need to take out loans to pay for them. Business cards were stamped with words that people use to label others and printed with erasers that everybody has in their house. Kazama’s theme was Japan as a consumer society! People spend money and get loans to pay for their possessions, and the Japanese phrase that is usually used to describe such possessions begins with the word, “my”: my car, my home, my bag, my cup, my, my, my… As you can see, not all of these are large-ticket items. That was why she called the show, “プチブル (Puchi Buru)” (Petit Bourgeois).
Destructive Consumerism
Why the white poodle? Small dogs that can fit handbags are very trendy in Japan. You say that they are popular in other countries, too? Not in quite the same way. Individual breeds become trendy. One year huskies were popular, and everybody had to have one even if they did not have large yards. Kazama remembered having a white poodle when they were all the rage and she used that to represent consumerism in her print. Is it a coincidence that the dog is cute, white, and destructive like the Stay Puff marshmallow man in Ghostbusters? I will have to ask her another time. To be honest, I originally thought the print said, “プチプル (Puchi Puru)” and meant small poodle! Her word choice was much more interesting than mine!
Meet & Greet
Please remember that we crashed this opening. Most people in attendance were probably friends of the artist or associated with the gallery somehow. We knew nobody; nobody knew us. We were obviously outsiders and stood out even more because we were not Japanese. One woman looked at us and giggled. She seemed to be an intelligent woman aside from that reaction and looked like somebody I would probably be friends with under normal circumstances, so I did not let her reaction upset me too much. The guy that opened the door approached us and started chatting. As a visible minority, people often want to talk to us instead of with us, so I automatically braced myself for the worst. What a pleasant surprise! He spoke to us in English but his English was really good. I mean really good and not filled with direct translations and katakana. Tamura-kun was the self-proclaimed best translator in Japan and supposedly owner of the country’s smallest art gallery. He was intelligent, inquisitive, and a fountain of information.
After chatting with him, I bravely gathered enough nerve to approach the woman who I thought might be the artist in question. She seemed just as eager and just as nervous as I was but relaxed when she realized I was speaking in Japanese. I don’t know if comparing her stitched bathrobe print with one by Jim Dine helped or hindered me but I think it broke the ice.
After a short Q&A session, we both relaxed as we realized we were both female printmakers. close in age, and of similar temperaments. She was not fluent in English but she knew a few words; my friend and I speak Japanese that is not perfect but we can successfully get our points across. If something was not clear, we also had Japan’s best translator on hand, right? We could make witty or sarcastic comments without the need to apologize or explain in great detail. (That can be rare in any country but maybe more so in Japan!) We could speak straight from the heart without any excuses. We were immediate friends!
Birds of a Feather Flock Together
Sachiko Kazama and Tamura-kun went out of their way to answer my questions. They were kind and generous in their explanations of the art scene in Tokyo. Like many places in Japan, mentors and networking are important. Other people have previously told me that one reason to get your masters degree in fine arts at one of the big universities in Tokyo is the networking. Your professors will plug you into their networks, introduce you to the right people, invite you to exhibit with them, provide employment, and possibly share or provide expensive art supplies or studio space. Every city, every medium, every genre, and every other category that you could possibly think of has a similar association with a strict hierarchy that requires membership and that might provide some of the same benefits. Kazama, like many of the other artists I know throughout Japan, dissociates herself from those groups and has thereby struggled to establish a name for herself. Her work is humorous and does not follow traditional Japanese methods of mokuhanga. The old men in those associations don’t know what to think about her work!
They reminded us that rental galleries are common throughout Japan. They then explained that the system was a Catch-22: you are damned if you do exhibit at those galleries and damned if you don’t. I was confused. They explained that Tokyo has another level: private or commercial galleries. If you exhibit only at the rental galleries, you are branded as an amateur or a hobbyist. If you don’t exhibit at a gallery in a country where most are rented, nobody will see your art. See the problem?
Kazama had a solo show at a rental gallery in Tokyo and was then approached by one of the curators from the SNAC gallery, which unbeknownst to me is supposedly interested in promoting emerging or re-emerging talent. She also advised sending information to galleries, giving presentations, and so on. I had already been thinking about volunteering for Tokyo Art Beat since I am always in their virtual space anyways, and Tamura-kun also suggested it. I guess I will have to drop them a line…
All in all it was a great evening! I learned something new and was reminded that I need to get into the studio to do some work. I need to just do it! Instead of letting ideas percolate in my brain for an incredibly long time until they get stale, I have to overcome my fear of starting new projects and scribble something down. Yes, scribble. Perfection is not needed or desired. Guess what my goals are for 2014…
Tape Tokyo
I was lucky enough to catch the Tape Tokyo exhibition at Spiral in Tokyo on December 14, its very last day. I had heard about the installation created with packing tape and I had hesitated going. I put it off and then put it off some more because I had no idea what to expect. Then I saw a photo of another installation by Numen/For Use made with black nets. I became intrigued. I convinced a friend to go with me, and we were spell-bound minutes after our arrival.
People waiting to go inside the installation were lined up the stairs inside the building. (That is nothing new in the Omotesando area where people seem to always be lining up to enter the newest restaurant or shop.) We were not sure at first if we had no choice but to line up to see any part of the piece or if we could walk around the perimeter of the space. Thank goodness that somebody else wondered the same thing and asked the woman behind us the same question! The line was only for those who wished to enter the cocoon-like structure; we did not have to line up to see the structure after all. We quickly gathered our bags and headed past the crowds into the inner sanctum of the atrium.
Neither one of us had been to Spiral before, so we had no idea how large the atrium was or even if it was outside or inside. The cocoon stretched out into a large concrete courtyard closed to all natural elements except sunshine and moonlight. A large spiral ramp that gives the building its name curled up to the second floor, but the space stretched up way above us. It looked like we were on location for the filming of the next in the series of Alien films, but it felt like one of those Moonwalk sites set up at summer carnivals where children bounce around inside. The plastic felt surprisingly strong!
Numen/For Use is an industrial design unit formed by Sven Jonke, Christoph Katzler, and Nikola Radeljkovic in 1998 and based in Austria and Croatia. They use the name, “For Use,” mainly for their furniture designs and “Numen” for other work. Numen comes from noumenon, meaning “substance”. This group has also created tape installations in Hasselt and Melbourne.
Gates of Hell
The Michelangelo exhibition is closing soon at the National Museum of Western Art in Ueno Park, Tokyo. Last chance to go and see it! Yes, the show is padded with lots of educational multimedia materials (in Japanese) and work by other artists but it still has a few gems that are worth the trip. Like a friend pointed out to me, the drawings were done by an actual human being and not just reproductions in a book. Yes, art conservationists had trimmed and trimmed many of the sketches so only a few millimetres of paper existed around an arm drawn by his greatness but it has still been preserved for hundreds of years. That has got to mean something! A sketch like the one of Cleopatra used on the poster was never meant to be artwork desired by collectors and placed in a gilt frame. Sketches often capture the fleeting movement of an idea as it flits around in the artist’s unconscious. Get your ticket at a discount shop nearby and you won’t regret it.
Then save your ticket to see the permanent collection and you can go and see artwork from Pierre Bonnard, Gustave Dore, Fragonard, Millet, and many other well known names from any art history book. The Italian prints echo the Michelangelo show nicely, and you will not have to fight the crowds to get a good view. “The Witches’ Procession” possibly by Agostino Veneziano was wisely chosen for the poster.
Agostino Veneziano
Engraving
After viewing the river of Styx and the demons fighting the angels in the pictures and engravings of the Sistine Chapel, you might want to take a stroll through the gardens in front of the museum and see the Gates of Hell and other bronzes by Auguste Rodin. These are truly one of the hidden treasures of Tokyo! More bronze casts are inside as part of the permanent collection but you can enjoy these particular ones for free, even without a ticket for any of the museum’s shows. Yes, they are real. They are bronze casts after all. Rodin could make several casts of any of his statues. Don’t the Gates of Hell look more frightening at night? The burghers could give you nightmares, too!
58th CWAJ Print Show
For only three days this week (Oct 10-12, 2013), you can see some of the best prints created by the finest printmakers of various nationalities in Japan. That’s right! Not everybody is Japanese. The College Women’s Association of Japan (CWAJ) organizes a show every year with proceeds from sales of prints and catalogs going to charity. Even if you have no chance to go to Tokyo, you can buy their catalog online. If you are a printmaker, you will love their catalogs! The show is usually held at the Tokyo American Club. More information is available at their website.