As announced last year, The National Art Center of Tokyo, in Roppongi is presenting this spring the second edition of the Artist File exhibition. On an annual basis, the ?File? presents a selection of artists chosen by the Center's curators and ?representative of the present and future of art?. Each artist is offered a large exhibition space, totally independent of the others. The aim here is not to confront points of view or encourage collaborations, but rather to jutaxpose eight personal exhibitions. However, if last year the exhibition seemed to lack in general coherence, this year's edition appears coherent in its diversity and quality.
        It is of course obvious that the exhibition cannot pretend offering a complete survey of the various tendancies of contemporary art, but nonetheless the selection shows a large panel of technics and concepts. Photography occupied a large part of last year's exhibition, with two foreign artists much present worldwile lately (Elina Brotherus and Polixeni Papapetrou), but this year is only represented by one artist, the Japanese Ishikawa. The only non Japanese participant of this year selection is the Dutch artist  Peter BOGERS, who presents interesting installationS and films.

        Also, if there is no apparent link between the different parts of the exhibition, we must aknowledge, then quiet down with two rooms devoted to photographs and delicate paintings, before entering a strange graphic and pictural world, whose atmosphere often borders to oppression. Large paintings of luminous and soft transparency offer a welcome respite, a breath of fresh air after this. The following room reveal an austere installation of sober stone pillars, a quiet but powerful stillness, before a succession of installations and videos. The exhibitions closes on a film presenting Shigeko HIRAKAWA's Photosynthesis Tree, a way to link this outdoor installation to the other elements of the exhibition. 

image courtesy Valérie Douniaux

 

So the first room of the Artist File is devoted to the spectacular works of Minoru OHIRA (http://www.minoruohira.com/), a Japanese artist born in 1950 and presently living in California, after a few years in Mexico. The overall effect is breathtaking, surprising the visitor as soon as he steps in the exhibition. But, at the same time, these pieces, despite their monumental scales, seems all roundness and lightness. There are made of wood chips glued on thin and supple wood structures. The titles, in which the concept of wind takes a large part, confirm the sensation,  calling for images of weightlessness and movement. The forms are abstract but seem strangely familiar, universal, natural, evoking large nests or baskets, a hut offering a welcome shelter, trees under the wind, animals ... The naked wood, devoid of coating, amplifies the impression of natural structures, even if here and there a trace of painting recalls subtly the life of the material before its renaissance under the artist's hand, by a manual work that we can easily image long and sometimes painful.

Naoki ISHIKAWA

Leaving these powerful sculptures, we now enter the photographic section of the exhibition. Their author, Naoki ISHIKAWA (http://www.scaithebathhouse.com/en/exhibition/data/071116naoki_ishikawa/), born in 1977, is the youngest participant of the 2009 edition of Artist File.

NAOKI ISHIKAWA, "Grave yard/llulissat", 2006 courtesy scai the bath house.gallery clik			NAOKI ISHIKAWA, "Ilulissat/GREENLAND#3", 2006 courtesy scai the bath house.gallery clik

 

Traveller-artist, ISHIKAWA gets a direct experience of the world he captures in images, going all over the planet, from Greenland to France, without forgetting his native coutrny, presented here through its most famous symbol, the Fuji. ISHIKAWA is famous for being the younger alpinist to climb the highest pics of all continents. He has also participated in an adventure whose aim whose to go from one pole to the other by the only capacities of human force. However, no spectacular demonstration of power exhude from the photographs, which on the contrary seem to bathe in a peaceful atmosphere, even when the environnement is one of harsh nordic winter. It's the everyday life of the inhabitants of these places that we discover, very far from the usual reportages about polar expeditions we are more used to see. The pictures tell us that life is after all the same everywhere, showing dogs sleeping in the snow while a Christmas tree shines in the background, or tombs emerging from the white blancket of the ground. But, of all the photographies presented, the only ones that really convince us are those dedicated to Mount Fuji. Represented over and over by hundreds of artists, the sacred mountain testifies here again of its undeniable plastic qualities, the striking contrast of the almost black ground against the whiteness of snow creating a powerful yet simple graphic effect. But these pictures go farther than a purely abstract representation of the perfect cone of the mountain, showing at the same time some aspects that are usually ignored : the crater seen from the sky, shelters on the flancs of the moutain, the coarseness of the path leading to the top...

Mio KANEDA

After this ballad around the world, we enter a very Japanese creative universe, the works on canvas and paper of Moi KANEDA, born in 1963 (http://faculty.tamabi.ac.jp/html/en/100000063.html). Her works have the smoothness of pastel but are made with oil paiting, even when the surface is made of paper. The atmosphere is delicate, as if lighten from the inside, inspired by the thousands of subtiles beauties of our naturel environnement. 

Meo SAITO

This feeling is challenged by the works of the following artist, Meo SAITO (http://www.artunlimited.co.jp/meo/bio_e.html), born in 1973 in Tokyo. The dense ensemble is composed of several large works printed on vertical papers and of dozens of small works on wood and paper. The paintings reveal an almost maniac precision, in vivid hues where red predomines. A room of flamboyant red walls accentuates the oppressive atmosphere. Under an apparent delicacy, the paintings also exhude strange feelings on a closer look. Fascinated by accumulations, the artist patiently attaches herself to long serial work , for example to a personal almanach or to an Encyclopedia of poisonous  flowers. Huge wreaths recall the mortuary wreaths but also those offered in Japan for shops or restaurants openings. They appear like ironical hommages to the intense, almost suffocating activity of the city.  The power, sometimes destructive, of human feelings, also underlies all of Saito's works, with a restrained violence that sometimes seems ready to explode, or with a kind of harsh melancholy for childhood, particularly the artist's childhood.

Miyuki TSUGAMI

After this unstelling plunge into such an intimate expression, the large canvases of Miyuki TSUGAMI (http://www.squidoo.com/miyuki-tsugami ; born in 1973), bring space and welcomed light. The abstract landscapes show vibrant yet transparent colours. The artist always starts with sketches on paper, attentive to capture not only the visible elements but also the atmosphere, light, sounds, passage of time ... through the filter of her spirit and memory, she gives us to see the invisible things that surround us, and that we inconsciously perceive... that is what gives her landscapes their impalpable quality. 

Shingo MURAI

Very different is the approach of Shingo MURAI (http://members.jcom.home.ne.jp/amabiki/artists/murai.htm#murai5, Japanese only), born in 1952, and whose austere granite blocks express a sober and silent monumentality. However, the silence is quickly broken by strange noises coming from the corridor leading to the following rooms, awaking the visitor's curiosity.

Peter BOGERS

These surprising noises come from the installation of Peter BOGERS (http://www.peterbogers.com/ ; born in 1956 in the Netherlands), The United Field, made of three video projectors and speakers. The two lateral projectors diffuse a grille of black lines on a grey background, while the main screen shows the image, between reality and animation of John Hagelin, a quantic physician who is also the Minister of Sciences and Technologies of the Global Country of World Peace and a great promoter of Transcendental Meditation. He praises the merits of the latter in the movie, presenting it as the solution to universal troubles when practiced on a large scale by a large number of people. Following a regular rhythm, choirs of voice express themselves, apparently in response to Hagelin discourse, from fourteen little speakers coming from the ceiling to the height of visitors ears. When we get closer to the speakers we discover that this strange hymn is really the reunion of fourteen individual recordings of people singing nursery rhymes, by excellence songs of intimacy. So that, what first appears to be an invocation in answer to Hagelin's pompous and technical  speech is on the contrary its exact opposite, the affirmation of individuality, intimacy, humanity over a pseudo-universality which might become as dangerous as what it pretends to fight. The installation succeeds in pointing at one of the major problems of our times, but with a sense of humour that temperates the rigour of the ensemble, and with undeniable esthetic qualities. The visitor is not a simple viewer, he can walk inside the space, listen to each singer separatly, expressing the artist's wish to associate conceptual and physical apprehension of the work.

        Shared Moments is a video constructed with images taken in Eastern Europe. The artist has filmed  several persons, unknown to them, until his subjects become suspicious and turn their eyes to the camera. Juxtaposing simultaneously the various images on the screen, and distorting time by the use of slow motion, until the furtive moment when watched people become watchers, Peter Bogers associates in a same ?shared moment? several people filmed at different times and places, the artist and the visitor.  

Aiko MIYANAGA

Photo: MIYANAGA Aiko
Courtesy of Mizuma Art Gallery

Born in 1974 in Kyoto, Aiko MIYANAGA (http://www.aiko-m.com/ebiography.html) creates a delicate and nostalgic universe. Her installation of old Japanese drawers, of which some are opened and lightened , invites to a ludic and curious visit, as if in an attic full of forgotten treasures. The objects we discover, in spite of being part of our everyday life (gloves, shoes, toy train, ballet slippers ...) have a fantomatic aura. These are not the objects themselves, but their cast reproduction in mothballs, a material we can hardly suppose to be apt to such metamorphosis and which implies in itself notions of preservation, protection ... Time seems suspended. The other installation of the artist presents ceramics disposed on glass shelves supported by old apple crates. By a particular process of fabrication, the ceramics emit resounding cracklings. Unfortunately, if you have not read the catalog before the visit, it is not easy to graps the fact...

Shigeko Hirakawa

Shigeko Hirakawa (http://shigeko-hirakawa.com/ ; born in 1953), of whom we have been following the career with the greatest interest for about ten years, presents outside of the museum a new version of her Photosynthesis Tree.  Originally conceived for the city of Argenteuil in France, and then presented again at the Mine Museum of Lewarde, North of France, and in the United States, the installation takes here even more spectacular proportions, three of the trees planted in front of the museum entrance being covered with a total of about 4500 discs. The visual effect is superb, on the background of the monumental glass wave of the building. The frequent variations of the weather in this season, going from snow to spring sunshine, from wind to rain, constantly offer new apprehensions of the work, following the caprices of nature. The plastic discs give a new life to the naked branches, adorning them of colours ranging from a sprectral white at night to a violet when the sun is bathing the tree, a result of the action of ultraviolet rays on the pigments inserted in the discs. No doubt that, in spring, with the eclosion of new leaves, the installation will express clearer than ever the interrogations of the artist about the relation of man and his environnement.

Shigeko HIRAKAWA is expressing in this work (which is part of a larger project called Air in Péril) the effects of industrialisation on nature and climate, particularly on the process of  photosynthesis, necessary for our survival. During photosyntheis, chlorophylle transforms carbon dioxyde in oxygen,but the process is seriously endangered by the progressive disappearance of chlorophylle, visible by the the decoloration of forests.  Loosing little by little their green colour, the forests seem to send us a warning. Will we be able to understand it before it is too late? 

In conclusion, as last year, the Artist File clearly fulfills the postulate determined in its title. Apparently without coherence, the juxtaposition of personal exhibitions offers, as soon as we take some distance, a panorama of art today and we hope that the experience goes on in the following years, so that to form a subjective and non-exhaustive encyclopedia of the multiple states of art in Japan at a given time, as well as a temoignage of the view of the actors of the art world on the contemporary creation of their countries and of foreign countries, from the choices they make amongst the numerous artists in activity.
                               

Valerie Douniaux, march 2009

 

En savoir plus :

A report on Peter Bogers' work at the recently opened exhibition "Artist File in the National ArtCenterTokyo', Japan. click here

http://www.nact.jp/english/exhibitions/af2009.html

http://www.nact.jp/exhibition_special/2009/af2009/index.html (japanese version but with many images)

http://www.tokyoartbeat.com/event/2009/E82A.en