Art in Japan>Contemporary Art 1930-2004>Surface Tension: the Grotesque in Recent Exhibitions

Original articles on art, artists, architecture, exhibitions, galleries, museums and cultural institutions around Tokyo, Japan.

Surface Tension: the Grotesque in Recent Exhibitions

by John McGee

Patricia Piccinini, The Young Family (detail), 2002-2003, silicone, acrylic, 
human hair, leather (Photo: Graham Baring)

Japan's current fascination with the grotesque goes beyond the bloody nurses of Harajuku and the perversions of salarymen. Three exhibitions up now offer the latest on the transmogrified body. In "Mysteries of the Human Body," flayed cadavers expose fantastic biological systems. "Surrealism of the Body: Perspectives on Hijikata Tatsumi's Body" traces the development of the tortured movements of Butoh dance. And "Patricia Piccinini: We Are Family" proposes possibilities in a genetically enhanced future. 

In "Mysteries," preserved human specimens from a Chinese research institute create a three-dimensional, flesh-and-blood "Gray's Anatomy." There's a fragile model of all the blood vessels in a human forearm (the flesh and bone stripped away), one person's entire digestive tract from mouth to anus, and human fetuses ranging from 2-10 months. 

Tatsumi Hijikata performing in 1968 
(Photo: Tadashi Kurabayashi)
 

Science imitates art imitating life as multiple full-body models show there's more than one way to skin a corpse—in a series of lunch-meat cross sections a la Damien Hirst, for instance, or in nested layers like Schwa-chan (Arnold Schwarzenegger) in "Total Recall." Injected with a special resin, the bodies have no smell and are posable—an archer holds a bow and a four-person conga line does a danse macabre. 

Unforgettable sensationalism aside, this autopsy parade is educational. Doubting Thomases can touch one of the specimens and hold a pomelo-sized human brain. 

Tatsumi Hijikata (1928-86), the founder of Butoh, was less interested in how the body works then in what happened when it broke down. To show how he formulated, taught and performed his tortured dance of disease and discomfort, this exhibition compiles photos and videos of historic performances, stage designs by Natsuyuki Nakanishi and others, choreographic notations by Hijikata and Kazuo Ono, Hijikata's art collection, and artifacts from Asbestos Studio, the Butoh school he ran with wife Akiko Motofuji. They also hold regular Butoh workshops and performances. 

Sexuality and affliction were common themes in Hijikata's jerky, flailing performances. But he taught his students to use dance to be something—e.g. an animal or ghost—rather than express something. To help them visualize, Hijikata used scrapbooks (on display) containing images torn from art magazines: Picasso's Guernica, de Kooning's women, Hans Bellmer's poupee and other expressionist and surrealist works. 

Another beneficiary of the surrealist tradition is Patricia Piccinini (b. 1965), whose human, humanoid and other sculptures were the darlings of the 2003 Venice Biennale. Now her "family" has moved from the Australian Pavilion to the Hara Museum, a converted house. 

They don't look like the neighbors. Piccinini's most provocative sculptures here combine the features of humans with various animals—pigs, horses, meerkats—in silicone and acrylic projections about humanity's future.

"Mysteries of the Human Body," exhibition view (Photo: John McGee)

Piccinini calls her chimera "endearing…beautiful and loved." In some groupings, smiling human children look at or play with the creatures. The scenarios are like the promised land illustrated in Jehovah's Witness pamphlets (happy people of all nationalities feasting, sheep and lions lying together)—attractive, but unlikely in our world of obstinate racism and fear of difference. 

Other work on view—a CG nature video of quivering pustules squeezing out polyps, motorcycle helmets for creatures with odd-shaped heads, and two lads with the faces of 60 year-olds playing a Game Boy—also deal with yet-to-be-defined otherness.

"Mysteries of the Human Body" was held Nov-Dec 2003 at Tokyo International Forum in Yurakucho, Tokyo, Japan. "Surrealism of the Body: Perspectives on Hijikata Tatsumi's Body" was held Dec 2003-Jan 2004 at Taro Okamoto Museum of Art in Kawasaki, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. "Patricia Piccinini: We Are Family" was held Dec 2003-Feb 2004 at Hara Museum of Contemporary Art in Shinagawa, Tokyo, Japan.

©2006 John McGee

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