Category Archives: exhibitions

Small Music – Rolf Julius Memorial – Gallery Niji

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Thanks to Atsushi Nishijima, former guest speaker in the zemi, for information about the Rolf Julius Memorial Exhibition which will be at Art Space Niji (アートスペース虹) until April 15th. Rolf Julius, who, sadly, passed away last year, was one of the earliest artists to explore relations between sounds, objects, and settings. Here is a rare and valuable opportunity to see original works by an influential sound artist right here in Kyoto. If you visit the exhibition you may have a chance to meet and talk with people who knew and worked with Julius. I met his daughter, curator and art historian, Maija Julius, gallerist  Sumiko Kumagai (熊谷寿美子) who opened Art Space Niji  in 1981, and art photographer Toshio Kuwabara (桑原敏郎) who showed a work created in collaboration with Julius. The exhibition includes works by other artists that worked with Julius, including Akio Suzuki (鈴木昭男) who is scheduled to be an invited speaker in our seminar in 2012.

Here is a photo of a work by Rolf Julius, linked directly from the Niji Gallery web site:

Access/Opening times for the Exhibition. Note here will be a symposium held at MOMAK (京都国立近代美術館) this coming Saturday afternoon.

 

Marc Riboud @ Kahitsukan

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The Kahitsukan (何必館), a contemporary art gallery in Gion that frequently exhibits black and white photography, currently has a show of prints by Magnum photojournalist, Marc Riboud. The exhibition closes on April 22. If you are interested in seeing the exhibition, and would like a free ticket, let me know.

There’s a really good tsubo niwa (坪庭) on the top floor of the Kahitsukan.

 

Retro-Futurism, continued

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For some time I have been meaning to point out an excellent article on the avant-garde Japanese architectural movement of the 1960’s known as Metabolism. The article, by Amelia Groom, is titled Past Futures, was published in Frieze magazine earlier this month, and includes an interview of Pritzker prize-winning architect/theorist Rem Koolhaas by writer/musician Nick Currie (Momus) who was a guest speaker in our zemi in late 2010. Rem Koolhaas has recently published Project Japan, Metabolism Talks, in conjunction with the Metabolism exhibition at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo last year.

The following quote from the Frieze article, a statement by Arata Isozaki (磯崎新) about the Big Roof pavillon at Expo’70, has stayed with me over the several weeks since I read the article:

Okamoto’s tower was allegedly named in reference to Season of the Sun, the 1955 novel by the disreputable current governor of Tokyo, Shintaro Ishihara, in which the protagonist breaks through a shoji paper screen with his erect penis. The Metabolists’ disapproval of it is encapsulated by Arata Isozaki’s histrionic condemnation in his 2006 book Japan-ness in Architecture: ‘Alas, when at last I saw Okamoto’s tower (looking like a giant phallus) penetrating the soft membrane of the roof, I thought to myself that the battle for modernity had finally been lost.

 

Here is precisely the meeting of avant-garde modernity with kitsch in an extremely candid and memorable fashion. As we know, Kenzo Tange’s (丹下健三) Big Roof is long gone but the Tower of the Sun (太陽の塔) has become perhaps Osaka’s most iconic landmark. I also found interesting a passage claiming Taro Okamoto (岡本太郎) framed this tension in terms of a simplistic Jomon/Yayoi dichotomy:

Okamoto had pushed for modern Japan to embrace what he considered to be the dynamic, primitive spirit of the nation’s Jomon legacy (c.14,000–300BCE), as opposed to what was perceived as the refined, reductionist and aristocratic aesthetic of the subsequent Yayoi era (300BCE–300CE).

Such simplifying theories of nationality were no doubt influenced by Okamoto’s Surrealist pals during his lengthy stay in Paris in the 1930’s.

MAVOxやなぎみわ: 1924人間機械

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Conceptual art photographer Miwa Yanagi is producing Tomoyoshi Murayama (村山 知義) 1924 play  Ningen Kikai (人間機械). Performances will be held at the Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto April 13-15, in conjunction with the Murayama exhibition. Tickets may be reserved at Miwa Yanagi’s official web site.

ビデオアート@百万遍

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Students from Kyoto University of Art and Design (京都造形芸術大学) are holding an exhibition of video art in a dis-used office just east of Hyakumanben, on the south side of Imadegawa street. If you are interested in video art, it is well worth going to have a look. The exhibition will be open again next week (金土日). Check the flier above for details. Here’s the access map.

Thinking Out Loud in Naoshima

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Click for full size

I’m spending a couple of days in Naoshima recovering from several weeks of publication and reviewing deadlines, administrative duties, and too many long meetings.

No photos allowed inside the splendid contemporary art museums here, so instead I’ve tested the inadequacy of (my) words by recording some spontaneous thoughts while viewing artworks. The following unedited 25 minute ramble is completely off the top and in all likelihood boring or ridiculous.

James Whitney Vintage Poster

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Click for larger image.

Films shown in this exhibition included:

  • Exercises 2, 3 & 4
  • Yantra
  • Lapis
  • DWIJA
  • Wu Ming

The subtitle reads:

Initially shown as part of the poetic eye series of the los angeles county museum of art nov 1977 guest curator WILLIM MORITZ.

There is a description of each film on the verso of the poster.

Click for larger image.

Poster courtesy of the Center for Visual Music. James Whitney’s films are rather difficult to see these days and would even more difficult to see if not for the CVM, which organizes regular screenings and conducts restoration projects. Thank you CVM and keep up your excellent work!

retro-future

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I’m pretty bad at drawing but this image stuck with me from the Graduation Show and I decided to make a sketch because I wasn’t really happy with my photos. This is a ‘back-to-the-future’ scene in more ways than one: head-mounted displays give me a strong sense of nostalgia for the early 1990s when they were all the rage in VR research. Of course, HMDs have been around since the 1960s, but only the military (or those with military research grants) could afford to build or buy them. In the mid-1980s HMDs started to be more widely available commercially, though still at pricetags so high only the best funded labs could afford to p(l)ay. That era has long passed: by the late 1990s the HMD, like the VR ‘Cave’, came to be considered a bit of a dinosaur by the HCI research community, who tend to be much more interested in less brute-force display techniques that don’t obliterate the wonderful natural sense of sight. Besides being impressed by the shiny technology and beautiful kimono, a child might wonder why the model seems to be engaging in a solo session of  blind man’s buff. In the 1990s, HCI researchers were wondering the same thing. Many came to the conclusion that blind man’s buff, while fun, might not be a good interaction metaphor.

Recently, on the other hand, there are rumours Google will soon release hardware ‘Google goggles’ allowing flâneurs to search the Internet while on a stroll and show the results with a lightweight see-through display. That will be pretty cool. Not really new though, either. I first saw someone doing this (or claim so) at a conference in the early-mid-1990s. There’s good reason to believe that it was at least partly a fashion statement and, more likely than not, only partly functional at that time. But if Google’s hardware works well and is affordable, it will be cool indeed. You don’t want to know the price of an HMD of the VR ilk.

東京五美術大学連合卒業・修了制作展

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The best art exhibition currently on in Tokyo is free, open on Mondays, allows picture taking, and is held in one of the most stunningly cool buildings in the metropolis, The National Art Center (国立新美術館). If you’re in the capital, this is the one to see. It feels very good indeed that our tax money is used in a way that is clearly beneficial to the well-being and future of the country.
(click thumbnails for larger images)




Tokyo

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I’m visiting Tokyo for a couple of days to work on an article with a colleague. I’ll also have some time for museum and art gallery visits. First stop: Mori Art Museum in the Roppongi Hills complex, where I caught two shows today, including a major solo exhibition by one of East Asia’s leading contemporary artists, Lee Bul. The show is billed as the “First large scale solo exhibition by Asia’s leading female artist.” I’m not sure whether or not Lee Bul is Asia’s leading female artist. Her artfacts.net ranking is dropping. But her work certainly has great intellectual depth and originality. I may post something separately about the show.

Picture-taking was not allowed inside the Lee Bul show. Here are a few shots taken afterwards.

Spotted in the Mori Art Museum bookshop: Japanese and English catalogues for the recent exhibition on the Metabolist architectural movement, and Rem Koolhaas‘ recent book on the subject. More about this in another future post.

There are some stylishly dressed people in the Mori Arts Museum. I liked this lady’s blue and black colour scheme, to which the photo does no justice.

The plaza outside the Mori Tower has a cosmopolitan atmosphere that recalls parts of Montreal. This Louise Bourgeois spider sculpture contributes to the feeling.

Both Google and Baidu have offices in the Mori Tower, as do Goldman-Sachs and Barclays. Rent must be high and things seem expensive here.

Witnessed earlier in Yuraku-cho on the way to Roppongi from Tokyo station:

After seeing prices in Roppongi Hills complex, it is much easier to understand why everyone is desperate to win the lottery.

Inside Roppongi station, on the Hibiya line. Wherever we go, we’re soon reminded of home.