Takafumi KOBUKI, art critic
Inverse Perspective Landscape #0 is a multidisciplinary project reconsidering the relationship between ‘landscape’ (rendered as fu-kei in Japanese) and ‘human beings’, where fu-kei is a generic word for nature, the environment, the world, etc. The exhibition reconsiders the Western modernist way of looking at the world which has permeated our lives.
Although I was at first a little puzzled by this diverse team drawn from a wide range of disciplines, it was in fact interesting to explore an exhibition by artists, architects, philosophers, a poet and a scientist in which together they work to integrate their thoughts through art. To this end, the booklet accompanying this exhibition was a very helpful resource in accessing the project's aims, containing as it did not only each participant’s writings about her or his own field, but also a collection of cross-disciplinary conversations.
The 10 participants are: Etutomu Kashihara, Nagahiro Kinoshita, Keisuke Sugiura, Hiroyuki Tsubomi, Minoru Morikawa, Keita Hayashi, Yo Hamada, Masako Yasuki, Nobuo Yamanaka and RAD.
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Chiho SAKAI, art critic
In our daily lives we use the word ‘landscape’ without thinking deeply about it. Inverse Perspective Landscape #0, though, invites us to reconsider the word, its basis in Western humanist ideas and the way these have filtered into its everyday use.
This exhibition had its inception in a discussion between media artist Keita Hayashi and painter Masako Yasuki about human perception, who went on to coordinate and participate in the project with eight other specialists from a range of fields, including fine art (Etsutomu Kashihara), history of thought (Nagahiro Kinoshita), poetry (Keisuke Sugiura), experimental psychology (Hiroyuki Tsubomi), installation art (Minoru Morikawa), comparative religion (Yo Hamada), photography (Nobuo Yamanaka) and architecture (RAD).
All the participants thoughts on the subject are expressed through artwork, but what is particularly outstanding about this exhibition is the way in which these different perspectives are subtly and gracefully interwoven into a whole throughout the exhibition space, thereby creating a sense of unity and coherence in atmosphere. While each work had its own individual allure, the exhibition as a whole is more than the sum of its parts. The manner in which the works of individual participants are synthesized adds a further layer of attraction, and is testament to the depth of discussion and detailed study that went into tackling the question of ‘landscape’ here.
The projection of Nagahiro Kinoshita’s text on the 2nd floor provides the final touch to what is an excellent exhibition.
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Yasuyuki NAKAI, chief curator, National Museum of Art, Osaka
As March 11th draws nearer, what we see and hear will be increasingly focussed on the Great East Japan Earthquake and the issue of Fukushima, although I am personally of the opinion that no artistic expression has the power to address this kind of disaster, and distrust any that follow from and reflect this kind of event.
This said, not a few people might feel that the dialogue between Noi Sawaragi and Naohiro Ugawa (‘Redefining art after the earthquake’, Shincho, Jan. & Feb. 2012) was a powerful one. In this, it is argued that ‘to think about artistic expression in Japan is to clear the way for telling the story of the memory of the disaster’. Sawaragi insists that ‘all we can do is to carve out our own art which is different from that of Western countries’, although whether this remark reflects just a passing mood or the beginning of an argument for us to examine the nature of art and its roots, it is too soon to say, although it is clear we are on the cusp of some change in situation.
. . .
Our day-to-day lives are still going on, though, and there is one recent exhibition that cannot go without mention. In Inverse Perspective Project #0: Landscape (GALLERY FLEUR, Kyoto Seika University), Masako Yasuki’s ‘Pine Woods’ deeply interested me. This work is based on present-day pine woods, but also references Tohaku Hasegawa’s famous sliding door painting of the same title. In Yasuki’s painting the pine trees are white (the colour of the canvas) whereas everything else that would be background to them is covered in gold leaf. Reflections on the gold from sky-scapes by media artist Keita Hayashi create constant, delicate changes in the appearance of Yasuki’s work.
And so it is that standing in front of this painting, you may feel urged to question the validity of Noi Sawaragi’s observations about ‘artistic expression in Japan’ existing only with ‘disaster’ in mind. And you may realize that what Sawaragi is saying is simply extreme.
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