ARTIFACTS

Since the late 19th century, Japanese art has been schizophrenically split into yoga (Western-style) and nihonga (Japanese-style). The latter arose as a self-conscious response to the inroads of the former. Nevertheless, when nihonga took up the challenge of Western art, it was unable to avoid borrowing some of its ideas, most notably the romantically inflated concept of the “divine” artist. But instead of Michelangelo or van Gogh, nihonga found its role models in the elite artist/craftsmen of the Rinpa school. The Yamatane Museum of Art’s exhibition What Did Nihonga Learn from Rinpa? uses 50 mainly large works to look at echoes of the school in the works of 20th-century nihonga artists. Particularly worth seeing is Kaii Higashiyama’s vast seascape Rising Tide and Gyoshu Hayami’s Falling Camellias. Through Dec 25. See exhibition listings (Ginza/ Kyobashi/ Tokyo) for details. CBL Giveaway! Metropolis is offering readers ten free tickets to “What Did Nihonga Learn from Rinpa?” For your chance to see this excellent exhibition, email the following information by Wednesday, December 17, to editor@metropolis.co.jp: 1. Name; 2. Address; 3. Age; 4. Home country; 5. Last exhibition you visited Include the text “Nihonga” in the subject line. Winners will be selected at random.

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By Andrew Conti

Canada Tsuga: The Feeling of Wood

The Canadian Embassy presents wood in function and fantasy

Hisako Sugiyama, Eklipse—Ellipse, Canada Tsuga and stainless steel, 685x685x3790mm, 2005 (one of two parts) Photos Courtesy of The Embassy of Canada

The crossroads of art and science have always been an active space full of cross-pollinating ideas, concepts and, of course, materials. The latest exhibit in the cavernous Prince Takamado Gallery at the Canadian Embassy in Akasaka magnifies one such intermixing of science and art to microscopic detail.

“Canada Tsuga: The Feeling of Wood” focuses on one of Canada’s most important natural resources, Tsuga Canadensis (more commonly known as Eastern Hemlock), in a manner that mixes sculpture and architecture with generous servings of ecology and environmental sustainability. The wood is chosen not only to highlight its versatility as a material, but also to examine Canada’s role in developing sustainable forest management and protecting the global environment and its resources.

The exhibit brings together engineer Naoto Ando, who as a professor heads Tokyo University’s Laboratory of Wood-Based Materials and Timber Engineering, and Hisako Sugiyama, a Tokyo-born artist who has exhibited throughout Japan and in Europe.

Ando’s works are mostly utilitarian demonstrations of the wood in construction and engineering. A few pieces stand out as curiously contemporary architectural forms of uncertain function. Module (2005) is a cubic mass formed of half-meter-long pieces of Tsuga bonded together to form a computer circuit-like pattern. The Stick (2005) is comprised of two small forms that are potentially a chair, a table or simply an abstract sculpture.

Gallery view

On the back wall of the space, a group of photographs with titles like Subtractive Interference of Polarized Slash Grain (2005), taken by Tokyo University science professor Yukie Saito, display the microcosmic structure of the Tsuga wood. In the gallery atmosphere, these works become a series of psychedelic abstractions, but rather than being particularly informative additions to the show, they mostly evoke nostalgia for high school science classes.

Without doubt, the gems of the show for art lovers are Sugiyama’s endearing minimalist sculptures. The three works on display, entitled in German Eklipse—Ellipse I, II and III (all 2005), are large but delicate geometric structures of Tsuga wood that appear both solid and fragile in the sizeable gallery space. The shape of the first two is like a compressed horseshoe lifted off the ground and suspended between a thin frame, while the third sits lower to the ground and is filled with several long metal rods that emerge from the end of two small boxes in the shape of a hollow ellipse. Moving around the works reveals more of their structural sophistication as the shadows they cast variously elongate, revolve and disappear to form an exquisite extension of their forms.

For an exhibition that promises “the feeling of wood,” there are unfortunately only a limited number of works that visitors can actually interact with and touch. Only Ando’s The Floor (2005) and Mortise & Tenum (2005) allow such tactile pleasures. Yet the curator’s aim to provoke a relationship between visitors and a seemingly bland construction material is accomplished, and one leaves the exhibition both satiated by the artistic possibilities of the material and informed about its scientific value and role in the larger environment.

Canadian Embassy, Prince Takamado Gallery, until Sep 23. See the Akasaka exhibition listings for details.

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