The return of the son of ‘Big in Japan’

We are here. Out there is the neon throb of Shibuya. Lights, a milky way of lights, everywhere.

Fifteen minutes ago we (meaning a band of Canadian, Portuguese, and Estonian art writers — plus me, a foggy-eyed Filipino scribbler of some-things) were lost in the bright green-and-pink lung of Tokyo. We wanted what the Bill Murray and ScarJo characters partake of in that long-ago movie: rock karaoke, rockin’ sushi, robust Japanese beer (make mine Suntory!), an epiphany or 10, and the Jesus and Mary Chain. Lost we were, yes, until we found (or did he find us?) a young Japanese TV director who would take us to bars where tourists would boldly want to go, but it’s primarily where the locals hang out.

Now this: platefuls of eihile (manta ray?) and basashi (horse meat?) — hmmm… maybe our newfound friend is just winding us up — stare before us, surrounded by tall mugs of maccha (green tea) beer to wash them all down. David the Canadian cues up a Roxy Music song on the karaoke machine and off we go. Anythin’ else more than this? I doubt it. Even Bryan Ferry would doubt it.

We have just wrapped up our assignment in Japan: visit the Aichi Triennale in Nagoya as well as the satellite exhibitions in and around Tokyo — everything arranged by the Japan Foundation.

We attended Tokujin Yoshioka’s “Crystallize” show at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (MOT) — featuring a medley of a sculpture of crystallized flower, a chair constructed of seven strings, and sculptures built of crystal prisms (“Spider’s Thread” and the awe-inspiring “Rainbow Church”). There was an installation of a crystallized painting being created (right before the very eyes of visitors) by the vibration of music. Swan Lake wafted delicately through the air. Made me think what if the artist used South of Heaven by Slayer instead, or what about Mandatory Suicide. Massacre on the frontline…

 Another show we visited was the “Bunny Smash” group show. Weird looking into a window and seeing yourself gazing back at you (Leandro Erlich’s “Lost Garden”). Quirky is experiencing “The Moon Walk Machine-Selena’s Step” by Sputniko! featuring that hot, female Space Oddity of an anime artist Reiko Igarashi, posing the question: what if a girl stilettoed and sailor-mooned across the surface of the moon?

One of my favorites is Marnie Weber’s “Log Lady & Dirty Bunny” wherein a Frank-like creature from Donnie Darko sits on a log and contemplates the other artworks on view. Looney Tunes meets The Sea of Silence, perhaps?

I never knew there was a really cool museum in the Roppongi area: the Mori Art Museum in Roppongi Hills, with chief curator Mami Kataoka and publicist Kayoko Machino showing us around then-current show, “Roppongi Crossing: Out of Doubt.” What I found impressive — aside from the “Prison Nuke Fission” artwork of Kazama Sachiko and the classic 1956 “Island” painting by Nakamura Hiroshi — was the 2001 work of Yanagi Yukinori titled “Eurasia.” Here, the artist fashioned an ant farm installation (consisting of plastic tubes, pipes and colored sand depicting the flags of different countries). Viewers could see the cracks and tunnels on and under the surface of the flags, clever metaphors for — as I read it — corrosion and corruption, the disunion of nations. Or maybe the opposite, you never know with these things.

The situation was rosy, though, with our virtual united nations of journalists (from Estonia to Cuba, from the Belgium to Israel) as we traveled from Tokyo itself to the art island of Naoshima. Our tour bus, along with other vehicles, parking easily into the ferry at a dock in Okayama’s Uno Port. 

Now you see it… Naoshima.

If Doctor Moreau were a regular Joe, wasn’t macabre at all, and collected modern and contemporary artworks, this island in the Seto Island Sea would be more than apt as domicile: the place is characterized by palettes of leaf green and cement gray — tall angular museum-buildings jutting out of brawny tree-lined hills.

A factoid: One time, when Yayoi Kusama’s dotted pumpkin sculpture was carried into the sea by a typhoon, fishermen promptly returned it to its place at the dock; the villagers having grown to love the piece and its place in the Naoshima landscape.  

The aesthetic look of the Benesse House (both a hotel and a museum) was courtesy of Osaka-based architect Tadao Ando. Everything about this place speaks of tranquility of design and awesomeness of art (Andy Warhol, Richard Long, Hiroshi Sugimoto, David Hockney, among others). Even the bento boxes look as if they were designed by Josef Albers.  

Other must-see places include Lee Ufan Museum, the Art House Projects and the Chichu Art Museum (round and round, kilometers upon kilometers of Claude Monet water lilies).

Any artwork of Walter de Maria is ingenious, Hiroshi Sugimoto is poetic, and Monet is money, but the installations of James Turrell are simply — to use a word that is bandied about by other writers so many times it doesn’t mean anything anymore… until now — “life-changing.”

I’m not sure if a piece of gourmet cupcake or a Miley Cyrus meme could be considered “life-changing,” I am damn certain though that viewing or, in many cases, going inside a James Turrell artwork (“special rooms, unusual light”) is.

According to the New York Times, “The joke among Turrell’s friends is that, to see his work, you must first become hopelessly lost.”

True, true. At Art House Project’s Minamidera space is Turrell’s “Backside of the Moon.” You go inside the building that is pitch-black, thus you end up holding hands with the tall Belgian dude in front of you so that the dark wouldn’t swallow you whole. A guide will tell you to let your eyes acclimatize to the dark. It took mine more than 10 minutes. By that time, everyone was walking toward the end of the room, mesmerized by a huge glowing round light. You’d say, this is the “moon” as stated in the title. In truth, there is no moon gradually appearing out of nowhere. Just your eyes getting used to the darkness. The light had always been there.

At the Chichu Art Museum is another Turrell installation, “Open Field.” You go into a part of the museum bathed in orange to see that up a few steps is a wall with a rectangular field of blue light. You then discover that the blue light is not light at all but a doorway into another room. You go forward and then turn around to see that the doorway has transformed into a rectangular field of orange light. It’s all a matter of light and angles. Not magic, but optics.   

How art alters reality, changes lives, is the icing on this hemlock of a life. Sweetness for a sapped-out soul.

Just like honey.