Art in Japan>Contemporary Art 1930-2004>A Perspective on Contemporary Art: Continuity/Transgression

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

A Perspective on Contemporary Art: Continuity/Transgression

by John McGee

Ron Mueck, Big Baby #3, 1997, resin, 84x69x86cm (Photo: John McGee)

In the exhibition catalog to this show of 10 international and Japanese artists, curator Kazuo Nakabayashi wonders aloud at the current state of the contemporary art world, its future and the creation of art history. What's the role of the museum? Which artists best represent their time? How does culture evolve? Nakabayashi contends that the important ruptures with the recent past—the key art historical signposts—are not the flashy sass of bad-boy artists like Damien Hirst (sectioned cows and sharks floating in formaldehyde) but quiet transgressors who produce subtle but fundamental shifts in our perception of the world. 

Roland Flexner, untitled, 2000, 
ink on paper, 14x17cm (Courtesy of
Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris)

It's tough to fully realize the complexity of such an expansive theme with a limited number of works, especially when the works have almost no relationship to each other. Nonetheless, several pieces are intriguing in themselves. Ilya and Emilia Kabakov's fractured fairy tale, Fallen Angel, is one. A high, wooden picket fence in front of the museum surrounds a 12-foot tall angel face-planted into the front lawn, his left wing broken near the tip. Who was he—a real angel? A latter-day Icarus? Mothra kin? The notice posted by the fictitious “Department of Incidents” on a nearby wall suggests that the authorities wonder too. 

The life-like resin super baby by Australian Ron Mueck is freakish in a different way. At a crawling height of about three feet and with a crazed, dazed look, he is neither cute nor cuddly. (One of the curators confided that they were having trouble hanging the posters advertising the show because Mueck's baby image made people feel kimochi warui (sick to the stomach). 

South African artist Candice Breitz extracted all the warbled uses of the words “you” and “me” or “I” from the music videos of four female pop superstars: Karen Carpenter, Annie Lennox, Whitney Houston and Olivia Newton-John. Four pairs of monitors face each other, one side singing “you,” the other, “me”—like mantra versions of love's internal soundtracks. 

Roland Flexner's ink bubble drawings are attractive efforts at fixing chance and the ephemeral. By blowing a mixture of ink and soapy water through a straw and onto white, clay-coated paper, he creates circles of black and white swirls that resemble monochrome marbled paper. 

Candice Breitz, Four Duets (Double Karen, Double Annie pictured), 2000,
video installation (Courtesy of National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo)

But some of the other artists simply try to do too much in their work. Architect Jun Aoki, for example, clutters his otherwise effective gallery-within-a-gallery idea by pasting images of giant flowers on the walls and grass under the floor, creating an Alice-in-Laura Ashley-Wonderland effect. Tadasu Takamine's time-lapse video is partly about making a giant clay head lip-synch to “God Bless America” and partly an autobiographical bohemian love-story taking place around the construction of the clay head. 

Likewise, this show's main problem is its lack of direction and depth. Though some of the pieces work well independently, they don't make sense together. Nakabayashi seems to want to identify a few of the true tones ringing above the din of recent art history. Unfortunately, he doesn't clarify why these particular artists ring truer than others pursuing equally challenging programs. Also, the artworks lack sufficient context, making it impossible to understand what the “continuity” is that these artists are transgressing.

A Perspective on Contemporary Art: Continuity/Transgression was held Nov-Dec 2002 at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (MOMAT) in Kitanomaru Koen (Takebashi), 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.