Cambridge Galleries presents Big In Japan, an exhibition of six
contemporary Japanese artists
born in the late-60s and early-70s, who are now reaching international
attention. Big In Japan has been curated by Catherine Osborne who spent eight
weeks in Japan last
winter on a fellowship granted by the Japan Foundation.
Japanese adult
culture is avidly
unadult, Osborne writes. It is stuck on a continual quest for instant
gratification and blatant
adorableness. It's not fixated on youth, like us, it's fixated on
childhood.
Risa Sato's Campaign No. 8 (1999) comments on the adult desire for
innocence with a
multi-component sculpture that includes six functioning tricycles with
sperm-like heads.
Similarly, Takahiro Fujiwara's Beans-BALLOONs (1999) speak of another
kind of desire for
regression. His Beans-BALLOONs are two enormous pink and blue plastic
inflatable
jellybeans that you can crawl inside.
The experience of consumer culture figures in the work of Osaka-based
photographer Yuki
Kimura, whose Tobacco #3, Enemies Big & Small (1999) is a billboard-size
image of the back of
a girl's head and two packs of Lucky Strike, a popular brand of American
cigarettes.
Hiroyuki Matsukage's Star (2000) is a super-karaoke installation that
triggers immediate
adulation from an ecstatic audience the moment a viewer sings into the
mic. The ego
gratification of Star is contrasted with the anonymity of video artist
Saki Satom's work. Her
3-minute video loops draw our attention to the lack of individuality
within a city teeming with
office workers and department store shoppers. In her videos, you barely
notice her performance
interventions taking place at train stations during rush hour.
Artist Tsuyoshi Ozawa's Ai Ai Gallery (1994-ongoing) is a portable
gallery worn as a backpack.
The small scale of this work comments on instant gratification and the
proportional relevance of
art in today's culture. To see Ai Ai Gallery, viewers must call the
backpack-wearing dealer by
phone to arrange a private viewing and meeting point.
Big and Japan provocatively satirizes consumer culture, urban living,
instant gratification,
speed, crowds, shopping, sex, desire, fame, anonymity, and excess -- all
conditions that are
rampant in a metropolis like Tokyo, one of the richest, most densely
populated cities in the
world.
IMAGE:
Fujiwara Takahiro
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