Art in Japan>Contemporary Art 1930-2004>Yoshihiro Suda + Tetsuya Nakamura: Un Monde Revé de la Main

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

Yoshihiro Suda + Tetsuya Nakamura: Un Monde Revé de la Main

by John McGee

Far above the wet Ginza streets, neon light pulsed through the glass bubble-wrap walls, illuminating the high room with warped colors. The sharp outlines of two slim fiberglass supercars cut diagonally across the space. Nearby a tulip lay cast on the wood floor... The scene isn't a Ridley Scott melodrama, but an art exhibition at Maison Hermes, the flagship store the French luxury goods maker opened in Ginza in June, 2001. 

Yoshihiro Suda, Tokyo Installation 2,
1995, wood and paint 
(Courtesy the artist)

Glass blocks form the wavy, translucent carapace of the 10-story, Renzo Piano-designed building. This makes the double-height, eighth-floor gallery—a.k.a. Hermes Forum—more like a glass house than a traditional white cube. "As an exhibition space, it isn't easy," concedes curator Yayoi Kojima. To compete with such a visually powerful room, the artwork has to be equally dramatic. The two artists Kojima selected for this, her curatorial debut, use opposite strategies. 

Tetsuya Nakamura's two cars are thin, custom-painted fiberglass shells—half record-setting supercar, half cruise missile—meant to evoke speed. Part of his "Replica Series" started in 1998, they are too pretty, fragile and functionless: they sit on table legs not wheels. They are like carcasses shed by a beautiful beetle, immobile surfaces, masks. This reference is no coincidence. Nakamura got his master's degree in traditional Japanese lacquer at the Tokyo National University of Arts and Music. 

Nakamura's third and newest piece, "Replica Custom Parts," is the most compelling in the show. It is a single, painted fiberglass engine shell from a supercar. Sitting on the floor, separate from the cars, it resonates with the gravity of a mysteriously unmarred fragment of a jet engine found at the site of a plane crash.

Yoshihiro Suda, the other artist in the show, takes a softer approach to the space. Where Nakamura's cars occupy the center, Suda's lifelike, handcarved wooden flowers and weeds are placed in the margins—along a window frame, in a gap next to the elevator shaft. According to Kojima, Suda played with the architecture but didn't want to disturb its special feel. His subtle interjections—a single orange tulip pops stem-first from the wall far overhead, a green weed sprouts almost imperceptibly in a curved glass corner—heighten awareness of the space and how you move through it. 

Tetsuya Nakamura's studio, crammed
with fragments of the "Replica Series" 
sculptures (Courtesy the artist and
T. Imura)

One of the reasons Kojima chose these two artists is that their carefully handcrafted work follows this year's theme for the Hermes Forum: The Hand. The Japanese title of the show is a play on words. "Te No Sukima" means "Gap Between Hands." In the kanji though, the character they've used for suki is "like," not "gap" (the French title is closer to "A World Dreamed by Hand"). 

Nakamura and Suda, both Tokyo-based artists in their early 30s, are hardly strangers. They were founding members of Studio Shokudo, a now disbanded collective of contemporary artists influential in the latter half of the 1990s. Since then, each artist's career has been gradually progressing. Suda, for example, will appeared in the 2002 Sydney Biennale. This show too, with the excellent venue, interesting work and sensitive installation will likely help further the reputation of all players involved.

This exhibition was held May-June 2002 at Maison Hermes in Ginza, Tokyo, Japan.

©2006 John McGee

©2006-2008 John McGee. All Rights Reserved. No part of this site may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission.