Tastes And Pursuits:
Japanese Contemporary Art At The Metropolitan Museum
By Lionel Zivan S. Valdellon

published in LocalVibe.com : April 1999

Ask the regular guy to talk about Japanese art and he'll probably gush about Manga (comics) or Anime (animation videos). Well, people, there's more to life than Mazinger Z! And I set out one sunny afternoon to the Metropolitan Museum along Roxas Boulevard to find out exactly what.

Tastes And Pursuits, like any group exhibit, is multifarious. What unites the eclectic mix is its Japanese origin. Each of the works has its roots in the tiny country but branches out to embrace the globe in the '90s. Which merely means the stuff's relevant, astute and like Japanese architecture, quite minimalist.

There is pop culture here: Yasumasa Morimura's art transposes his own face onto famous paintings, while Takashi Murakami incorporates cartoon characters into his silkscreen prints. There is modern technology: Keisuke Oki's computer graphics are seen thru 3-D goggles while Tatsuo Miyajima's "Opposite Circle" is a 5-meter-wide circle on the floor of continuously flashing numbers made up of hundreds of LEDs. There is manmade construction here: Hiroshi Sugimoto captures theatres in haunting black and white photos, while Goro Hirata displays his "Honey Boat" made out of beeswax, honey and glass then posts pictures of his past works on the wall.

But allow me to explore my personal favorites:

Emiko Kasahara explores gender issues thru her art. In her Pink series, seven oversized photos of the female cervix are tinted pink--- an homage to the unique apparatus of childbirth. In her two untitled marble works, the double urinal (shaped like female breasts) and the slit #3 (a toilet seat shaped like a woman's hips and genitals), everyday objects are turned humorous. Seems like there's a statement somewhere in it about women's bodies becoming repositiories of the world's filth.

Rieko Hidaka, on the other hand, turns to the trees surrounding her home for inspiration. In 4 huge (and highly-detailed) monochrome paintings, she has rendered photo-realistic tree branches, using the unique worm's-eye-view. And yet, Hidaka seems less concerned with the tree than the space which its branches encompasses.

Yukinori Yanagi's "Article 9" is a series of red neon signs that lie flashing on the floor. The text, taken from Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution, is the nation's renouncement of war. It's a modern reminder of a past promise, but somehow the gaudy, mundane presentation begs deeper discernment. Is it a warning, or a sign loudly heralding a future of commerce and trade-offs?

And then there is Miwa Yanagi whose infinitely-looping 14-minute video installation "Kagome Kagome" draws you into its unreal labyrinth. In it, women in white (elevator girls and department store guides--- the Japanese version of promo girls) traverse a never-ending hallway where doors become display windows, elevators then subways. The atmosphere is neither gloomy nor joyful, merely… sterile (fabricated) and claustrophobic. It is Yanagi's concept of a "detached utopia": a comfy place where there is no escape, where you serve in silence and the desire for consumer goods overwhelms all. Feels eerily like life as a Makati yuppie.

The media are varied, the messages numerous, but the barely restrained passion a common element to each of the artists represented. Tastes And Pursuits is, after all, an engaging exploration into the human condition from a uniquely Japanese perspective.

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