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Art in Japan>Contemporary Art 1930-2004>Shimabuku: Watching the River Flow Original articles on art, artists, architecture, exhibitions, galleries, museums and cultural institutions around Tokyo, Japan. Shimabuku: Watching the River Flowby John McGee  From Going to Asahi Breweries
Company, Asakusa, by Canoe to Pick Up When Asahi Brewing offered Shimabuku some free beer for his exhibition, he turned the transaction into a work of art. The artist’s gallery, ShugoArts, is on the Sumida River, about ten bridges downstream from Asahi’s own riverfront location. Rather than have a truck deliver the six cases of beer, Shimabuku and his gallerist paddled a canoe upriver to get it themselves. Gallery assistants followed on bicycles, videotaping and photographing their progress. Everything went smoothly until the return trip, when a sudden March storm whipped up waves and dumped rain in the narrow craft. They eventually arrived safely, if not Super-Dry. The installation, Going to Asahi Breweries Company, Asakusa by Canoe to Pick Up Drinks, in ShugoArts’ main space captures the quirky spirit of the event through video highlights projected on a wall, a bilingual wall text, life jackets, paddles and a canoe filled with cans of beer. Kobe-native Shimabuku, 34, often incorporates humor and site-specific elements into his performance-based work. Going to Asahi highlights another key factor: collaboration. The artist explains that, as this is his first show at ShugoArts (and his first solo show in Tokyo in five years), he wanted to make something with the gallery rather than “hang a bunch of squares on the wall.” 
Shimabuku, Going to Asahi Breweries Not that one could mistake his work for polished painting. The casual look of Going to Asahi...—non-professional video, matter-of-fact installation—and the five other artworks in the show is deliberate. “Art must be magic, very cheap but very good,” says the Shimabuku. Moreover, the artist wants to stress that anyone can do these things. “I am showing how to do...I’m not doing things that only an artist can do,” he says, “I’m just an ordinary man.” You may have unwittingly already created a Shimabuku-style work. The artist once had a stone lodged in the tread of his shoe. As it traveled with him everywhere, he became as attached to it as it was to him. The artist replicates this feeling in Comradeby putting a metal screw into the sole of one of the shoes owned by the work's collectors (it’s an edition of eight). He extends the idea by exchanging the names and addresses among all of the collectors of Comrade, forming a kind of registered network of screw carriers. The piece is shown here as an explanatory text and A3 color photocopies of photos of the screws in the bottom of collectors’ shoes. 
Shimabuku, Going to Asahi Breweries Shimabuku injects adventure into the everyday, and discovers the odd in the ordinary. Octopus Stone, the latest in the artist’s annual octopus projects, is a short video on octopus fishing, a color-saturated photo close-up of a yellow-eyed, mottled-red cephalopod inside the pot used to catch him, and, on a nearby shelf, a collection of the rocks, shells and other objects the creatures clutch like teddy bears while hunkered deep inside the pots. Though reluctant to call himself a teacher, Shimabuku notes that his fellow countrymen in particular need his examples of DIY creative expression. “In Japan, people are rich but not happy, so I need to show them [what to do],” he says. “I’m showing how to become happy with little money.” Visitors to the exhibition can consider this while drinking free beer and flying dangly legged octopus kites (available for loan) from the nearby Eitai-bashi Bridge. _______________________________________This exhibition was held Mar-Apr 2003 at ShugoArts in Shinkawa, Tokyo, Japan. ©2006 John McGee |
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