Art in Japan>Contemporary Art 1930-2004>Yokohama Triennale: Mega Wave Towards a New Synthesis

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

Yokohama Triennale: Mega Wave Towards a New Synthesis

by John McGee

The question is not if but when to visit the Yokohama Triennale. With only two weeks left, make it soon. This first installment of Japan’s largest contemporary art exhibition portends good things for the future of art here as 110 of the international art world’s most creative minds (from 38 countries) inundate the port with inspired and inspiring work. 

Fiona Tan, Saint Sebastian, 2001, video
(Images courtesy Yokohama Triennale Office)

The curators desire to promote interaction and dialogue among the arts and with other, non-art fields led to a flexible, chaotic approach for the exhibition, where the mixing of forces would spin many new dynamics. Still, there are at least two distinct “moods” at the Triennale’s main venues—the Pacifico Yokohama Exhibition Hall and the Aka Renga (Red-Brick Warehouse No.1). The Pacifico Hall feels like the home of a mildly eccentric but jovial friend, someone with eclectic but excellent taste. It might be a bit cluttered at times, but there is always something new and curious to discover. The visions of three of the four curators—Nobuo Nakamura’s interdisciplinary approach, Fumio Nanjo’s melting-pot of young and diverse talent, and Akira Tatehata’s “Asian Passage” of Japanese, Chinese, Indian and other Asian artists—clash and commingle along the thoroughfares and in the warren of galleries in the high-ceilinged Pacifico. 

Mariele Neudecker, Unrecallible Now, 1998, 
mixed media installation

The Aka Renga is a 15-minute walk down the park/industrial wasteland waterfront from the Pacifico Hall. Like an aged church of some esoteric faith, it is solemn, self-important and often beautiful. Due to low ceilings and low light, the interior of the vintage, European-style, converted brick warehouse is quite dark. That suits the tone of fourth curator Shinji Kohmoto’s “Advancing Matrix” theme of alternative (and, at times, politically-charged) social systems. 

It is difficult to do critical justice to such a massive event with such an expansive theme. But the purpose of the Triennale—to spark interest in contemporary art and to open discussion about new ways of thinking about the world—seems largely fulfilled. Sure the theme could be tighter, the efforts of some artists are disappointing, some spaces are too crowded with ideas and objects, and the catalog is still not available. Most visitors, however, seem to leave with leg-weary satisfaction. 

Shiharu Shiota, Memory of Skin, 2001, 
mixed media installation

The surfeit of quality work and new discoveries overwhelm the few disappointments. A popular favorite, Tabaimo’s room-like anime installation follows a train on a  surreal loop, carrying egg-laying schoolgirls and giant sushi chefs through an endless city. Fiona Tan’s 16mm film documents a Japanese coming-of-age archery ritual in lush close-ups. Kyoichi Tsuzuki’s bizarre alien-fiend sex museum is an absurd piece of Japanese onsen cultural history saved from the scrap heap. Cai Guo-Qiang’s electronic fireworks can be viewed from the comfort of an automatic massage chair or beyond Mariele Neudecker’s mountain range jutting out of a white pool. Humorous scale manipulations appear as Huang Yong Ping’s oversized fishing lures, Maurizio Cattelan’s tiny elevators, and Noboru Tsubaki and Hisashi Muroi’s humongous inflated locust quivering on the side of the Inter-Continental Hotel. 

Other treats include climbing steps into a high-walled room where a stream of water falls from the ceiling onto a large cement slab (Toshikatsu Endo), walking over a metal floor in shoes with magnetic soles (Marina Abramovic), watching Joelle Ciona slowly build a human-size paper wasp nest, and happening upon Carlos Garaicoa’s delicate architectural perspective wall drawings made of string and tacks. Plan to spend all day.

Yokohama 2001: International Triennale of Contemporary Art was held Sep-Nov 2001 in Yokohama, Japan.

©2006 John McGee

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