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Take me out to the Wonder Forest
Reviews
Written by Satoshi KOGANEZAWA   
Published: August 10 2009

fig. 1 View from "Take me out to the Wonder Forest" in Musée d’art Mercian Karuizawa, courtesy of Musée d’art Mercian Karuizawa

fig. 2 View from "Take me out to the Wonder Forest" in Musée d’art Mercian Karuizawa, courtesy of Musée d’art Mercian Karuizawa

fig. 3 View from "Take me out to the Wonder Forest" in Musée d’art Mercian Karuizawa, courtesy of Musée d’art Mercian Karuizawa

    It was especially appropriate that the plan exhibition entitled “Take me out to the Wonder Forest” (Musée d’art Mercian Karuizawa, 18/Apr/2009-10/Jul/2009) was held in this venue. Considering that this exhibition was held with the aim of showing us, the viewers, the “wonder forest”, it was a given fact that we had seen and knew about common “forests” before visiting this exhibition. It would be difficult for us to enjoy an adaptation unless we were familiar with the original. In other words, we were requested to have physically felt the air, sound, and scent of the forest before looking at the exhibits. Originally, Karuizawa was a place which was blessed with nature in spite of its location in a cold region, and therefore, the exhibition site was naturally located in a wooded place. As all visitors had to walk through such scenery to reach the venue (though it would not have been ideal if this had been their only experience of the natural world of the forest before visiting this exhibition), they could study the “forest” beforehand by themselves. So, there was a significant meaning to the fact that this exhibition was held not in an inner-city museum but in Karuizawa.

    The following four artists were the exhibitors in this exhibition, which was planned by the graf medeia gm: Atsuhiko Misawa, Mai Hofstad Gunnes, Nao Tsuda and Ai Sasaki. As Chiako Kudo, who served as a curator of this exhibition, mentioned in a catalogue of this show, this exhibition was planned based on works created by Misawa, who is known for making carved wooden animals. In this exhibition, his sculptures, which were chiseled boldly using various kinds of motifs, such as real animals and fabulous creatures, including a unicorn, were arranged majestically, or sometimes, casually, in spaces which were separated by using drape curtains trailing down from the ceiling. Nevertheless, unlike other common group exhibitions, Hideki Toyoshima (graf medeia gm), who was responsible for the spatial construction of this exhibition, did not intend to divide up the exhibition site among the artists. For example, Misawa’s sculpture of a horned owl was displayed in a space where Tsuda’s photographs “See Bach #5”, “See Bach #6”, “See Bach #7” and “See Bach #8” (2009), which had been taken in a forest in Germany, were hung [fig. 1]. In addition, we could find Misawa’s bear cub in a cabin in which Mai Hofstad Gunnes’s video pictures entitled “Imagining how plants grow” (2002), which showed us a scene of growing plants, were shown [fig. 2]. Thus, the main characteristic of this exhibition was that it displayed the exhibits in a cross-boundary way. One exception to this was Sasaki’s installation named “What Lies Ahead” which was created all over the wall with sugar used for decorating wedding cakes [fig. 3]. Sasaki succeeded in adding a cool impression to the exhibition room through this work because of its light image, which was generated by using the color white, while numerous gigantic trees were depicted by layering the white color thickly, which made us feel that this wall painting had a sense of massivity.

    Furthermore, it was noteworthy that we could see Misawa’s creations not only in the exhibition room but also in the museum shop and outside the building. A bird was flying around the ceiling of the shop, a bear was lying in a cabin which had been created in the garden, and a rabbit was welcoming us cutely outside the doorway. Indeed, from the standpoint of conserving art works, it cannot be denied that there is some risk, but I appreciate such approaches, including allowing viewers to take pictures of the works which were displayed outside the museum, in that this exhibition was held in a venue which tourists often visit because of its location. Above all, as I have mentioned, the feature of this exhibition was the cross-boundary display, and the approaches in this exhibition imply not only the crossing of boundaries between artists or their creations but also that between the outside and inside of the museum, namely, between artificiality and nature. The “Wonder Forest” did not compel us to have only one image of it, and it was completed as an independent exhibition. Therefore, through this exhibition, we could step into an imaginary forest, and pass to and fro between reality and fantasy.
(Translated by Nozomi Nakayama)

Related Exhibition
"Take me out to the Wonder Forest"
18/Apr/2009 - 10/Jul/2009
Musée d’art Mercian KARUIZAWA
Last Updated on October 24 2015
 

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