Art in Japan>Contemporary Art 1930-2004>Under Construction: New Dimensions in Asian Art (short version)

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

Under Construction: New Dimensions in Asian Art (short version)

by John McGee

Subodh Gupta, Pure, video, 2000 (Courtesy the artist)

In a back corner of the sprawling “Under Construction” exhibition, a video called Pure catches Indian artist Subodh Gupta in the shower. The sequence has been reversed so that, instead of clean water streaming down and rinsing him off, muddy water splashes up from the floor, slowly coating him in a thick layer of muck. He emerges from the shower covered in a brown, oatmeal-textured carapace, strides through his apartment, out the door and into a waiting elevator. Oh, he's not wearing mud—it's cow dung. 

“Yuck,” you say, “yet another performance artist working with that tired theme: the abject.” But don't be so hasty and Western. In India, Gupta says, cow dung is used in ritual purification. He knows that, encrusted in his shell, he's dressed for spiritual success. 

Most non-Indians wouldn't know this. That's one reason this piece works—it forces a reconsideration of the way Western ideology informs contemporary art (also, Gupta looks badass). 

Gupta's video installation gives one answer to the question at the center of this show—“What is Asia?” Yasuko Furuichi, exhibition coordinator at the Japan Foundation Asia Center, first asked this nearly three years ago, initiating the ambitious program that led to this exhibition of 43 artists from seven countries. 

Over the past decade or so, Asian artists have gained greater exposure in the international art circuit, generally via Western curators. But Furuichi wondered how Asians perceive themselves. Additionally, she wanted to plumb the diversity of contemporary art in Asia. To these ends, she assembled eight young curators (all were born in the 1960s or '70s) from seven countries—one each from China, India, Indonesia, Korea, the Philippines, and Thailand and two from Japan.  

Gimhongsok, The Boat, mixed media, 
2000-2002 (Photo: John McGee)

From the fall of 2001 through the spring of 2002, these curators collaborated in different ways to put up seven “local exhibitions” around Asia. Three worked together on nearly identical shows in Beijing and Seoul. Two made reciprocal shows in Manila and Ashiya (Japan). And individual curators made shows in Bangkok, Bandung (Indonesia) and Mumbai (India). 

For “Under Construction,” they compiled these seven shows then split them between the Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery in Hatsudai and the Japan Foundation Forum in Akasaka. Rather than maintain the distinctions between the hugely divergent concepts and contexts of each show, the curators opted to “re-mix” them hoping to create new dialogues among the work. 

As foodies know, Asian fusion doesn't always work. Same here: too often juxtapositions are simply jarring, not illuminating. Some visitors may relish being thrown into this mish-mash and given the opportunity to make their own sense of it. Others will desperately search, in vain, for guidance. 

Moreover, the artwork is crowded into the galleries. For example, Taro Shinoda's low tabletop gardens need at least twice the space they get—a narrow hallway formed by the private rooms housing Saki Satom's revolving door video and Yeondoo Jung's teen fantasy makeover slide projection. 

The exhibition succeeds in two ways. First, it has helped foster a contemporary art network centered in and on Asia. Second, it introduces a wide range (in quality and concept) of mostly young artists from several parts of Asia. And the best pieces, like Gupta's Pure, Sora Kim's good friend/bad business model Capital Plus Credit Union (in which you accrue interest on anything you give) and Gimhongsok's full-featured yet inadequate Boat, elicit new thoughts not only about the qualities of “Asianness” but about art in general.

The Under Construction: New Dimensions in Asian Art exhibition was held Dec 2002-Mar 2003 at Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery in Hatsudai, Tokyo and Japan Foundation Forum in Akasaka, Tokyo.

©2006 John McGee

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