Mondialisatieon is a good and a bad thing. It’s always reassuring to find something we know in another country when traveling and yet too often when we do travel, everything now seems to be the same. If you choose a hotel chain, it’s not going to look too different from one in another country. Those who love their steak can find it even in one of the Asiatic countries. I have close Korean friends and after all the years of coming to Paris - they still eat Korean food. Have artists also become « global »? Some historians feel that art should speak for itself and that there is no need to say « oh he’s Japanese » as if the nationality is going to explain the work. Remember when I spoke about Wifredo Lam - early in the piece I thought one of his works was a Picasso - how wrong I was. His roots are so engrained that obviously his art is not Parisian. Do we need to know it’s Colombian? Is nationality something which reassures the viewer? Sometimes I learn where an artist has come from and am quite surprised. It’s his work that counts for me and if possible that he has a unique style which I can relate to.
Yesterday I discovered the collection of Takahashi. Yes, you’re right. He’s Japanese and in actual fact, a psychiatrist. He started collecting works around 1977. The well know Japanese artists to begin with and then slowly he has built up a collection of some 2000 works and mainly of young Japanese artists of today. The setting at the Japanese centre is magic. Large enough to cope with 40 works which are shown to perfection. The paintings are very diversified and it’s worthwhile I think, to give a brief outline of the artists who for me, had a lot to say.
For openings there was this…Yayoi Kusama (1929-) - who maybe you too have heard of. This is called Pumpkin and was done in - 1990. The photograph does not do it justice. The yellow jumped out of the frame and the pumpkin seemed to dance in the light.
I have always admired her work and you have seen it quite often on the blog. Red spots to start with. She really is the locomotive of contemporary art in Japan. She worked for a long time in the USA and has had exhibitions all over the world. When she returned to Japan (which she found very conservative after the U.S.A.), she became an art dealer, but her business folded after several years. After experiencing psychiatric problems, in 1977 she voluntarily admitted herself to a hospital, where she now lives…
In the first gallery my eye was drawn at once to this by Rumiko Murayama.(1968-) It doesn’t have a title and was done in 2012. She had no training in the dying industry and learnt as she went along. This work is and accumulation of colors from start to finish. Each individual piece is dyed and then assembled on her sowing machine to create this immense drape. Her objective was to give added value to the color and not to the material - which is silk - in looking at it, walking around it, it was only the color which was there as if each one was floating in space.
From a little way off, Aiko Miyanaga’s (1974-) work didn’t really do anything for me until I looked closely at this case. She used resin which collects air bubbles as time goes by. Like traveling as we all do today - we collect as we go along. A case doesn’t look too new for long and as it moves around the world, it too picks up bits and pieces, scratches and dents.
Of course you know him. Yoshitomo Nara (1959-). Haven’t you seen this children with those severe looks as if they are daring you to do something?
 |
| Candy Blue Night (2001) |
 |
| In a deep puddle (1995) |
 |
| Green Mountain (2003) |
Izumi Katö (1969-) is not someone I know but these creatures are fascinating. He is at his happiest when painting such creatures. Slightly extraterrestrial ? It was not easy for me to look away. Their gaze was somewhat worrying. They are beautiful whatever they are but there is something very stranger about them. (There are no titles)
 |
| 2007 |
 |
| 2006 |
 |
| 2009 |
This painting "Return" was enormous and fortunately there was a comfortable couch to sit down on and just look. Tomato Kônoike (1960-). She’s certainly right in thinking that in recent years there have been so many unnatural phenomenon. Nature has been playing tricks on us and not nice ones either if you take into account 2011, climate change and all the destruction to our planet. This is a painting you contemplate and I did for quite a time, looking into what she saw and automatically what we know….
 |
| "Return - Sirius Odyssey " (2004) |
 |
| Part of the painting |
 |
| "Something from the Depths ll (2004) |
A very strange picture looks back at me. Momoko Fujita (1978-) shows you a creature creeping up from the depths. When she lived in France she had to fight against the dark and creatures visited her. Now back in Japan and the mother twins, they still prowl around her home and yet if they stopped, she would probably give up painting! Now she’s coming back to France. Will they still be there?
We are still somewhere in the cosmos and Slow Glass #051, #021 and #65
(2011) take us on a road down memory lane as if glass is able to slow up the passage of time. Nagoya Hatakeyama (1958-) feels that such reflections and the visual media are pertinent for reflection in both senses of the word. The past is floating away and so much of it is no longer memorable. We are afraid that the sheer amount of information which enters our brain and so little that remains. Slow light should slow up time but instead it becomes « heartless » and as our period is bathed in light all around us, there is too much to take in.
The artist excels in the relationship between nature and man. Photography. A recent exhibition he had was based on the tsunami and it’s destruction of his home town. In actual fact, the paintings of Slow Glass (there were 16 prints done) come from a multitude of rain drops on windows and by refraction of the light on the glass create very strange images. This work was done in the U.K.
Going into the next gallery which ran in parallel to the first, it was a shock. Two paintings which were very startling. The first by Mijjo Kumazawa (1983-) It’s called Panic (2009)and was painted when the artist was listening to the news on the financial crisis over and over again. Every centimeter of the canvas is covered. The women seem to be bigger than the buildings …..fighting to solve the problem of this recession….They are all ages and need to be looked at closely to see the anguish in their faces.
Then onto Erina Matsui’s work (1984-). « Star Wars Food Chain » (2008).
Your imagination will tell you that this too is the battle to survive .
We are killing off animal life - big and small - and man is destroying
an equilibrium of our universe. Aieeee. Looking at something like this
hurts. I can add that the face is a self portrait.
Doubtful if Manabu Ikeda’s work (1973-) is happier. Look at the extraordinary detail in this painting « History of Magnificence and Decadence » (2006). It was inspired by a Japanese castle and as he advanced he saw prosperity, decadence (undoubtedly corruption) and wars….as he says, history has a way of repeating itself. As with the two previous paintings, this too needed time to assimilate.
I was beginning to feel a little weak at the knees. I looked to my right and saw these…. « Finger Spanner » (1998) by Motohiko Odani (1972) Looking at the fingers I thought it was probably a girl, but no, a man. In actual fact the three works are dedicated to Robert Schumann in the 19th century. The question asked, «what sounds live inside us »? Can you hear sounds and inaudible voices within? The device is supposed to separate the fingers of a musician. The sculpture and photos are somehow very elegant but even so, pretty torturous.
Lieko Shiga’s (1980) photograph « Psychos Kaleidoscope »(2007) looks like a painting, but no….once again, based on time that is passing. To sum up the text (French) very briefly « The sacrifice of Men and Nature on a photographic alter are dedicated to what is there beyond…. »
Opposite I breathed a sigh of relieve. Two beautiful pictures by Kyôko Murase (1963-) « Light in the Forest (Standing) » (2003)
She describes the paintings:-
« I go deeper amongst the trees. The air is fresh and humid, the light which comes from a long way off, blinks at me. I don’t know any longer where I am. I have the feeling that all I have to do is clap my hands and this wonderful feeling which envelops me will disappear »
We have all experienced this, haven’t we?
Two, in a gallery of their own where quite beautiful. We were told here that a flash on the camera could be used. I didn’t.
The first, Hiraku Suzuki’s (1978- )work « Lock » (2015). It has something which seems like a passage which links the exterior and the interior. What is waiting for us outside - or - inside?
The second, by Tomoko Shioyasu (1981-) « Cosmic Perspective » (2015) was the world floating in the universe….the milky way…I wont go any further than that.
A little light relief with Kumi Machida’s (1970-) two paintings. « The Postman » (1999-2006) and « The Visitor » (2004). The postman is taken from a scene of a Jakuchû rooster (1716-1800) along with a lucky charm, a postman’s bag and a hat from a 90’s collection. At one moment Machida was obsessed by Japanese art and culture which motivated her to experiment with such compositions.
« The Visitor » is someone who arrives unannounced from no-where as if linking us to the world.
As I was leaving I glanced again at this by Kôhei Nawa (1975-). Direction #116, #117, #118 (2014). He tilts his canvas at 15° and lets the paint « slide » down from the tip. The different lines join and produce parallel lines which become stripes going in the same direction. The dynamic movements of space….
I was sliding down those lines into the cosmos. For a small exhibition my afternoon had been spent gazing or even scrutinizing the paintings. Ultimately I asked myself the question…. « are these young painters optimists or pessimists » ?
Commentaires
Love from Debi