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MOT Annual 2010
Reviews
Written by Mizuki TANAKA   
Published: March 15 2010

fig. 1 Kiyoshi Kuroda, courtesy of Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (MOT)

fig. 2 Junichi Mori "doll. hand" (2010); courtesy of Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (MOT)

fig. 3 Katsuyo Aoki, courtesy of Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (MOT)

fig. 4 Atsuo Ogawa "cutter knife skating I~VI" (2010); engraving on soap, courtesy of Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (MOT)

fig. 5 Hiroshi Mizuta "mansion" (2010); oil on canvas, courtesy of Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (MOT)

fig. 6 Nao Matsumoto, courtesy of Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (MOT)

fig. 7 Kentaro Yokouchi, courtesy of Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (MOT)

fig. 8 Asao Tokolo "BUILDVOID, study" (2010); paper, courtesy of Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (MOT)

fig. 9 Motoi Yamamoto, courtesy of Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (MOT)

fig. 10 Tomoko Shioyasu "Cutting Insights" (2008); paper, courtesy of Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (MOT)

    The MOT Annual has been held at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo ( in Kiba, Tokyo) every year since 1999, except for 2001 and 2009. It has provided us with an opportunity to view young artists’ artworks which play roles as bridges to the future. In this year’s MOT Annual, the tenth, the following ten artists exhibited under the theme of “ornamentation”: Kiyoshi Kuroda, Junichi Mori, Asao Tokolo, Katsuyo Aoki, Motoi Yamamoto, Atsuo Ogawa, Hiroshi Mizuta, Nao Matsumoto, Tomoko Shioyasu and Kentaro Yokouchi. These artists’ exhibits had one thing in common in that they were made based on the theme of “ornamentation”. In this context, what does “ornamentation” signify? According to the Japanese language dictionary Kojien, it means “dressing or decorating beautifully/dress or decoration(s)”. Despite this, the word, “ornamentation” does also include other meanings in the field of art. At the entrance of the venue of this exhibition, there was a panel on which the show’s organizer gave the following greeting message:

“In accordance with modernism in the 20th century, “ornamentation” was regarded as some kind of taboo and denied or neglected in being used to express something. However, with the rise of postmodernism, the traditional view of “ornamentation” has increasingly come to be reconsidered. Nonetheless, in the area of art, we have not yet been given sufficient opportunity for verifying the existing standpoint for “ornamentation”. Therefore, “ornamentation” is often deemed an element associated with figurative artworks or viewed negatively as a kind of deception in the art field.”

    In fact, “ornamentation” has been disregarded in contemporary art field.*1 Given this present situation, the MOT Annual 2010 attempted to see “ornamentation” from a different angle. Artworks presented in this exhibition may be able to be divided into three groups as follows.
    The first group of exhibits was made using so-called classic motifs, such as those of plants and animals. These motifs are based on old patterns which have already often been used in many parts of the world. However, the exhibits were not made using only a method of encoding, including patterning. For example, Kiyoshi Kuroda, who has drawn illustrations composed of Americancomic style lines giving us a pop art feeling, created a wall painting this time. In Kuroda’s exhibit entitled "Mori no Me" (The Eyes of the Forest) he drew trees, flowers, ivy and spiders on all over the walls of the exhibition room. In another of his works named "Kaze no Torimichi" (The Ways of the Wind) colored in part, he expressed plants and animals with beautiful curve lines. These works are not only beautiful, but also intimidated me somewhat, making me feel as if I was actually surrounded by huge creatures. Children experience similar emotions when lost in a forest. Junichi Mori made a stereoscopic work in which he graphically expressed a tree branch motif. In Mori’s other exhibit, patterns of grass were found to spread flatly. Both of these works by Mori were woodcarvings that left a sensitive impression. In addition, Mori exhibited a monochrome photograph of something like a skull and crossbones as well as a work in which he had scattered nuts onto and submerged aquatic vegetation on the head and hands of a girl’s figure and then colored it all up using white acrylic paint. The materials and close expression used in his works left me with me a weak impression, and made me conscious of death.
    Katsuyo Aoki exhibited gothic-style and decorative ceramics made in the form of a staff, skulls and crossbones and a frame made using decoration soil named slip. Inside of the frame, there were tiles on which ivy leaves?, flowers, plants and something similar to the viscera were painted and singed. The two skulls and crossbones displayed side-by-side on the back of the exhibition room looked like sculptures named Aun, but their details were made in a western style. Regarding these works what struck me was the odiousness of living matters and the fear and awe of mysterious things.
    Atsuo Ogawa arranged pieces of transparent soap (58cm×58cm×5cm) on each of which patterns that looked like various kinds of grass or ivy were engraved. He clearly expressed the contrast between ephemeral materials and creatures encoded using patterns by engraving patterns of plants on soap, as soap is one of the materials that wears out with time. Indeed, in these works, the motifs, including those of plants and animals, were the same things as used to depict “patterns” of ornamentations, but they did not lose their own meanings as motifs. They were expressed with the aim of making viewers aware of the life and death of the motifs themselves. In terms of this, the first group of exhibits left me with a fresh impression.

    The second group of works presented in this exhibition was created by citing something concerning ornamentation. Hiroshi Mizuta’s work would be one of the finest examples of this. Various kinds of surroundings in our daily lives, such as balconies in apartments, tiles paved on a sidewalk and lines of traffic looked down on from the above, were expressed with simple lines drawn using oil paints. Mizuta abstracted these motifs by leaving only their outlines, so that they ended up looking like patterns. He successfully transformed trivial landscapes in our everyday lives into ornamentations by utilizing a method of patterning motifs, including plants, which has been used in the history of ornamentation.
    Nao Matsumoto combined some motifs, including patterns such as those often seen on carpets, elderly women, and fairies and dolls appearing in the world of stories, and depicted them with a soft depiction using pastel-colored oil paints. The motifs of these patterns were used as things seen in the past, which gave the works a somewhat nostalgic feeling. The “ornamentations” having already been accepted by viewers before were received again by them through this creation of Matsumoto’s.
    Kentaro Yokouchi exhibited a painting in which he depicted a landscape that left the viewer with an impression of having seen it somewhere before. Yokouchi gave it colors, such as yellow and pink, similar to those of a hologram. The scenery expressed in this work had been obtained from an auction catalogue. The three artists mentioned above who presented their paintings in this exhibition compared the present and the past in their works by citing old methods and images of “ornamentation” and applying them to our time or using them to make viewers look back on the past.

    The last group of exhibits was created by decorating space. Objects ornamented were not physical things. In his “BUILDVOID study” series, Asao Tokolo has created stereoscopic works in geometric forms by connecting square parts of paper. One of the series displayed on a glass table was extremely impressive. When viewers pulled down a string trailing down from the ceiling, parts of the work which had been bundled together separated themselves and hung in mid-air, transform themselves into a three-dimensional work. In this way, a blank space was turned into an ornamental artwork. The shadow the work made on the wall was also really beautiful. I also thought Motoi Yamamoto’s exhibit was exquisite in its imagery. Yamamoto has created a geometric iconography like that of a labyrinth by putting a vast amount of salt all over the exhibition room floor. In fact, the material used in this creation – salt – leaves a solemn impression. It even evokes a religious image. This work can certainly be described as “ornamentation”. I could only stand in the space while looking around the creations born there.
    The highlight for me was Tomoko Shioyasu’s exhibit. In her creation, a piece of large white paper of 650 cm in height and 356 cm in width was hung from the ceiling. The paper was slit with a thin line, and a design similar to that of phoenix appeared. We, the viewers, were made to gaze at the shadow picture reflected on the wall with light. I felt as if the display space had been overwhelmingly ornamented.
    In fact, it seems to be no wonder that there were some exhibits, including those of Yamamoto, Shioyasu and Kuroda – he drew the painting using the entire wall –, that “overwhelm” viewers. This is really an innovative attempt by these artists. Recently we have increasingly become reliant on a method of viewing modern artworks in which we interpret concepts prepared by artists through their works. However, I felt this way of viewing works has been limited to the communication between only two people, namely, an artist and a viewer. In other words, we may have been forced to read and understand concepts provided by the artists.
    Despite this, visitors to this exhibition must look up at exhibits or have to look at creations displayed under their feet. I presume that initially they would be at a loss for words. They would only be able to be surprised at the works appearing in front of them with no time to think about their creators’ intentions. Gradually they would start to consider the artists’ concepts themselves. This exhibition seems to provide us with a chance to realize the large-scale communication in which we could judge by ourselves all things we encounter in the exhibition. In terms of this, we may say that the first group of exhibits made using motifs of plants and animals would have a fresh meaning. Here again, they made us conscious of human bodies or life and death. The motifs found in these creations seemed to have been selected as things relieving the exhibits from the tide of history of a certain place, and as a result are then able to be applied to everyone.*2

    Among the works presented in this exhibition, there were some creations which made me wonder if they could be regarded as “ornamentations”. However, it is also interesting to reconsider our own views on ornamentation while questioning its definition. “Ornamentation”, neglected for a long period in the field of art, seems to have gained some new meaning as a result of this exhibition. I wish the guide of curators of this exhibition can also provide you with an opportunity to encounter a place where a new perspective of ornamentation comes into existence.
(Translated by Nozomi Nakayama)

Notes
※1
For many years the art historian, Nobuo Tsuji, has advocated the theory that the “ornamentation” should be considered one of the characteristics of Japanese art. The exhibition entitled “KAZARI – The Impulse to Decorate in Japan” was held at the Suntory Museum of Art (Roppongi, Tokyo) in 2008. However, in this exhibition Japanese art was considered from an extremely long-term standpoint rather than within the framework of the present day. For your reference, I would like to extract the following part from a text written by Tsuji.
Nobuo Tsuji, “‘Kazari’ no Nihon bunka” (Japanese ‘Ornamentation’ History),(Kadokawa Shoten, 1998, p.7)

“As the word “kyoshoku (ostentation)” clearly shows, “ornamentations” or an act of “ornamenting”, in our daily lives today often give us a hollow image in that they are considered to be completely out of touch with the practicality, the actual benefit or the truth. Adolf Loos, who declared the phrase “ill of ornamentation”, described the excessive commitment to ornamentalism found in European buildings constructed in the early 20th century as ill and criticized it.
Even in Japan, there is a traditional perspective towards “ornamentation” which deems it to have almost the same meaning as that of an insubstantial “lie”. But then again, should we neglect and criticize an act of “ornamenting” in such an intense manner?”
※2
The brochure of this exhibition included the following note concerning the exhibits.
Mayumi Tsuruta “Symptom of Neo-Ornamentalism” (p. 8)

“Exhibitors at the ‘MOT Annual 2010’ tell us through their creations that we cannot find any ‘Orientalism’ in ornamentations created by Japanese and other Asian peoples, though it was always attached to old ornamental artworks.”
Last Updated on July 04 2010
 

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