【Related News】这个世界我们究竟能知道多少?(附图)--2011横滨三年展侧记

By any reckoning this has been a terrible year for Japan. The monstrous earthquake in March — believed to be the most powerful ever to hit the country — triggered a devastating tsunami that left almost 16,000 people confirmed dead and the nation reeling in the face of a nuclear crisis which seven months later remains un-resolved.

And yet — as curator Shinya Watanabe has noted here previously — the atmosphere that enveloped Japan following this disaster was far from despair. Even today this spirit is the first thing that you notice when you visit the country, a gentle buoyancy and a sense that misfortune has reconnected people with their deepest values: courage, compassion, and the capacity to endure.

From the perspective of an art correspondent this sense of optimism was no more striking than at the recent Yokohama Triennale, which opened just five months after what the Japanese refer to as the Great East Japan Earthquake, and closed this weekend. The original theme of the Triennale, which had long been in planning when the disaster struck, had been the question — rendered eerie in retrospect — “How Much of the World Can We Know?” This seems to have been posed by curator Akiko Miki as a catch-all which would allow her to choose from a smorgasbord of international art (contemporary, modern, and ancient) unfettered by a tight curatorial framework. It is clearly the metaphysical dimension of art that interests Miki most, something that may have seemed unfashionable prior to the disaster but in the light of it gave her Triennale a peculiar poignancy. The international contribution was strong, but what stuck in the mind later was the exceptional quality of the work by the Japanese artists, and also the quality of the audience response, which was by turns playful, reverent, engaged and engaging, making this one of the most restorative such events this correspondent has attended.

Curator Miki’s original theme, the question “How Much of the World Can We Know?” was, after the events of March, relegated to the status of a sub-title to the more life-affirming “Our Magic Hour,” the title of a 2003 work that Ugo Rondinone re-imagined for Yohohama. The Swiss artist’s works stood almost like guardian angels over the event: a rainbow arch spelt out “Our Magic Hour” (2003/2011) atop the entrance to the Yokohama Museum venue, while his huge, playful “moonrise.east” sculptures lined the walk outside to act as honor guard and camera magnet.

Inside, the strongest impression was made by Japanese artists, from the tragic, exceptionally talented young surrealist painter Tetsuya Ishida (who died in a traffic accident in 2005 at the age of 31) to the alchemically magical Motohiro Tomii, who created a sparkling golden wall from thousands of humble, precisely-placed thumbtacks. The local work was rounded out in the Triennale’s main space by international contributions that rarely rose above the expected. A moving exception being the work “One Sentence” (2011) by Chinese artist Yin Xiuzhen. From 108 individual people she had taken one day’s clothing (socks, underwear, outerwear — the lot) and reduced it to strips of coloured fabric which, tightly spooled and enclosed in a mock film canister, described the circle of each life, their total number echoing the 108 earthly desires that — according to Buddhist belief — lie at the root of suffering.

But it was the Triennale’s other space, BankART, that curator Osaka’s choices really shone. Our pick: the basement rooms devoted to things that come from the earth. Here European duo Dewar & Gicquel’s “excavated” clay hippopotamus emerged from the floor of one room, while in a neighbouring space was a dogged and poetic installation by Mai Yamashita & Naoto Kobayashi entitled “A Spoon Made from the Land” (2009). To fashion the work, the duo spent hours on a beach with a magnet gathering tiny grains of iron from the sand. These they smelted in a little foundry and poured into a mould, which they allowed to cool, and then cracked open to reveal… a single small spoon. The utensil itself — stuck like a flag of triumph into a pile of sand — took pride of place in their installation, while the video of their labors played beside it.

As it turned out Yokohama was not a unique experience. Back in Tokyo was an art scene that also seemed to be drawing on a deep well of talent and support.

Below, in chronological order of closing date, ARTINFO brings you our picks for the 6 best ways to contemplate Japanese creativity this fall/ winter season and gives an insight into the country’s art scene for those abroad.

“Light and Shadows in Namban Art: The Mystery of the Western Kings on Horseback,” Suntory Museum of Art, Tokyo

Yokohama, now Japan’s second largest city, was just a fishing village when Commodore Matthew Perry sailed his American warships towards its shores in 1853 and demanded Japan open its ports to foreign trade. But as with so many sea-faring “adventures” by Westerners seeking trade, it was the Iberians who got there first. In the late 16th and early 17th centuries, Portuguese and Spanish traders sailed to Japan, carrying both Western goods and proselytising Catholic priests. These foreigners, whom the Japanese called Namban (“southern barbarians”), introduced not only Christianity but also the Western style of painting. Some of the artists who were taught this new style — possibly under the tutelage of Jesuit priests — went on to create what are acknowledged to be masterpieces today. Amongst the creations of these anonymous (possibly Christian) Japanese artists were superb, monumentally-sized decorative screens depicting “Western Kings on Horseback,” artefacts which are today normally split between the collections of the Kobe City and Suntory Museums but which have been brought together for this special exhibition. Here they are seen alongside other examples of Namban art, which together embody both the glamour and the danger of the West from which they ultimately derive.