Japan medium light
From 01-07-2000 until 30-07-2000
Miwa Yanagi, Mariko Mori, Takehito Koganezawa, Rika Noguchi
Collective social prosperity in Japan is high, as reflected in the level of numerous public institutions and facilities (attractive department stores, spacious museums, new airports, fast trains). A Westerner very quickly gets the impression that the Japanese have organized their lives comfortably. The idyll exists of a country in which everything runs efficiently, smoothly and easily. This 'lightness' displays itself not only in the suppleness of public life, but also in other characteristics, as for instance the food, the physique of the people, their harmony with nature, the tolerance of Shintoism, and the automation of the highly developed technology. Yet there is very distinctly another side to this image of Japan. It has been aptly said that Japan is a rich land with poor people, in the sense that the progress of the collective has come at the cost of the immaterial development of the individual. The exhibition Japan medium light brings together a number of young Japanese artists, representing the 'lightness' of modern Japanese existence with their work, or providing a critique of it.
The digital photomontages and videoworks of Miwa Yanagi show us a phantasy world in which the notion of reality is forgotten. She is fascinated by Japanese consumer culture. Huge department stores are designed to be as beautiful and enticing as possible in order to meet the desires of the client. One of the components in that is the 'elevator girl.' Clad in a woman's suit and with a perpetual friendly smile this girl greets visitors, and standing by the elevator or automatic escalator with her presence she illuminates as much as possible the way through a synthetic world full of pomp and circumstance.
With great technical refinement Rika Noguchi creates photographic images in which gravity does not appear to exist and people dwindle into nothingness compared to their surroundings. Noguchi made a series of photographs on Mount Fuji, a symbol of Japan and unanimously venerated by the Japanese. She has also begun a series of photographs in IJburg (Amsterdam).
The reason why Mariko Mori left Japan was that she could not conform to the straitjacket of Japanese notions of community. Japan is a unified society which does not allow for individualism. In Japan people try not to behave outside common standards. You are constantly reminded not to step out of line. Like Miwa Yanagi, Mori produces video installations and photographs that she manipulates with the computer. Mori creates a new world of her own in which she herself plays various stereotyped women against the background of an imagined, often futuristic hyperreality.
The central theme in Takehito Koganezawa's work is time. Slow movements of liquid substances generate images and compositions that transform while the video is 'running'. Koganezawa's works come into being with the passing of time, gradually and transiently.
Website Mariko Mori
