Art in Japan>Contemporary Art 1930-2004>Eiji Watanabe: Tomorrow is Yesterday

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

Eiji Watanabe: Tomorrow is Yesterday

by John McGee

In Eiji Watanabe's latest show, a Matchbox-sized red Ford hatchback seemed to have sped across the gallery floor and crashed head-on into a wall, crumpling its hood (S=1/43, 2002). In this work and in six other conceptual pieces by the likable, 41-year-old bad-boy artist, lighthearted humor and simple execution shaped the accidents, approximations and amendments. 

Everyday materials and processes—popular among Japanese artists—become subjects for the Nagoya-based artist to research, reconstruct and toy with. Fascinated by the way an architect friend chewed the ends of his green pens into twisted wreckage, Watanabe borrowed three new ones and attempted to replicate the "teeth sculpture." Traced Habit (2002) displayed his efforts alongside a photo of the originals. 

For Square Timber (2002), Watanabe turned himself into a one-man lumber mill, hand-carving tree branches and sticks into amateurish mini-replicas of factory-hewn beams. Six small pieces, each roughly 9 inches tall, were propped against the gallery wall. A larger piece, "4x4," stood on end like a lone coffee-table leg. 

A fixture in the Nagoya and Tokyo gallery scene, Watanabe gained national recognition in the group show "Encounter" at Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery in January 2001 with another reworking of manufactured form. The wall-sized Nudist (2000) shown at Opera City was made of solid-color rubber beach balls that Watanabe tore into single, flat, biomorphic shapes and tacked on the wall like Matisse cutouts. (The title is conceptual rather than descriptive.) 

The best work in his recent solo, however, was a group of large inscribed photos of graffiti-covered rocks, Re-Sign (2002), that Watanabe made while in Edinburgh for a show last spring. The artist added his own name or initials to the photos by painting them with correction fluid or by scratching them into the emulsion, "signing" the images and insinuating himself (once removed) into the personal histories of the lovers and travelers who visited the sites before him. For example, "ML+AM" painted in white on black volcanic stone becomes "ML+AM+EW." He even found Japanese names, amending "Hiroko loves Akio" with "& Eiji." These works formed a clearly defined, finished set and could have stood alone as a show.

In all of his work, Watanabe highlights the distance between closely related ideas: the manufactured and the handmade, the photographic record and the physical record, unconscious habit and conscious activity. His sketchy manner—which emphasizes process over finish—can be charming. But, like the store-bought pint of cream that sat in a vitrine throughout the course of the show (FRESH 02.4.11, 2002), it can get old fast. Watanabe's greatest challenge is to avoid coming off as a college prankster or pseudo-anthropologist and to provide a bit more depth to his deadpan.

Eiji Watanabe: Tomorrow is Yesterday was held May-June 2002 at Kenji Taki Gallery, Nishi-Shinjuku, Tokyo.

©2006 John McGee

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