Volume 04, Number 16

Diversions
By Owen Schaefer

Too much open space?

Ten years ago, NTT opened its Intercommunications Center as one of the few spaces dedicated to new media art and as a gallery for communication sciences. Since then it has housed some of the best up-and-coming new media works I’ve seen. So what’s a gallery to do for a first-decade anniversary?

According to the ICC organizers "Open!" is the concept for the big anniversary event. And this means that the center (never expensive in the first place) has made admission free. Great! But here’s the catch. The Open Space exhibit has been on since last April, and will continue to be on until March—one full year of the same exhibits.

I have been a huge fan of the ICC for years now. Its use of space has always been careful, its exhibits wellchosen, and there is a kind of magic in entering those hidden, curtained rooms, never knowing what you’ll find inside. But surely something lazy has slipped into the works here.

There is a feeling, at least for me, that the ICC has taken a step closer to becoming a science center. A number of the works, including Kouichirou Eto’s Modulobe and the almost appallingly cute KAGE are certainly likeable and interactive, but seem more aimed at bringing in children than being though-provoking.

There are several bright points to this show (if at one-year-long you can call it a show) like the strange negative feedback of ghostly footsteps on the stairs that are not your own; the spectacular, if seizure-inducing, Juggler sculpture; and swimming in the power of information waves in DriftNet. And certainly, playing a game of table hockey against your own reflection is something to be experienced...especially if you find your "real" self losing.

But the question left floating in the electric-charged air of ICC now is, what next? Unfortunately, it’s a question we will have to wait a year to have answered. Hopefully, the next year will give the center time to recover its focus and bring some credibility back to the presentation of new media arts. But at worst, well, it’ll be a fun place to take the kids.

Open Space (to Mar. 9, 2008) NTT Intercommunications Center. Hatsudai Station. Free admission. 10am–6pm. Closed Monday. Tel. 0120-144199. www.ntticc.or.jp

A short wander through other worlds

Melting Point may not sound like the most inviting title for an exhibition in mid-August, but if you’ve had enough of the digital racket in the ICC, the Opera City Gallery will be a perfect nearby place to chill. The show features installation works by three artists: Jim Lambie, Ernest Neto, and Kiyomichi Shibuya, and each performs their own transformation on an entire gallery room.

Scottish artist Jim Lambie transforms his section into a gleaming hall of glam—oversized silver keyholes, a mirror-plated chair glued to the wall, and carpet strains of pure, shiny bling. Lambie’s best known installations involve laying down bands of multicolored tape, which follow the outline of the room, creating unique patterns that accentuate the shape of the space itself. Sadly, however, Opera city has little to work with but a perfectly rectangular gallery, and the effect is…diminished. But the shiny lines, nonetheless, do lend a kind of palatial feel to the whole thing.

But, Kiyomichi and Neto take the whole thing to a different level. Crawling on your knees into Kiyomichi’s work and gazing up at its temple-like ceiling is the spiritual counterpoint to Lambie’s shiny secularism.

And for the humanist, nothing beats Neto’s organic forms, made with some of the least organic materials. Neto’s works make use of lycra—yards and yards and yards of it.

For Melting Point, he turns one half of the room into a double layer of something remarkably tissuelike, which you are encouraged—in fact, required—to walk under and poke your head up through the holes, or vein-like structures running from one layer to the other.

Admittedly, even including the extra two or three works hanging in the outside hallway, the exhibition is a brief one, but admission allows you into the regular collection, and is worth it just to see three such different installations in one place. Melting Point (to Oct. 14) Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery. Hatsudai Station (Keio Line). 11am–7pm. (to 8pm. Fri. and Sat.) Closed Mon. Tel. 03-5353-0756. www.operacity.jp

Listings:

Daido Moriyama: Hawaii (to Aug. 25) Moriyama creates a very unusual vision of Hawaii with his trademark high-contrast photos. Taka Ishii Gallery. Kayabacho Metro Station. ¥900. 11am–7am. Closed Sun. and Mon. Tel. 03-3552-3363. www.takaishiigallery.com
Les noirs de Redon (to Aug. 26) Subtitled “The Monstrous Friends You See When You Close Your Eyes,” these are some creepy crawlies from a master Symbolist. Bunkamura Museum. Shibuya Station (Metro, JR). ¥1,300. Tel. 03-3477-9111. www.bunkamura.co.jp
The Great Railway Expo (to Sep. 9) Travel back and take a look at the much more beautiful, if smoky, trains of the Edo period. Edo Tokyo Museum. Ryogoku Station (JR). ¥1,300. 9:30am–5:30pm. (Thu. Fri. to 8pm.) Tel. 03-3626-9974. www.edo-tokyo-museum.or.jp
Morimura Yasumasa: Bi-Class, Be Quiet (to Sep. 17) Photography that teeters on the line between graphic work, performance, and photography. Yokohama Museum of Art. Sakuragicho Station. ¥1,100. 10am–6pm. Closed Thursday. Tel. 045-221-0300. www.yaf.or.jp/yma
Le Corbusier (to Sep. 24) The furniture, paintings, sculptures, and architecture of the renowned Swiss architect, in honor of what would have been his 120th birthday. Mori Art Museum. Roppongi Metro Station. ¥1,200. 10am–10pm. (Tue. until 5pm.) Tel. 03- 6406-6100. www.mori.art.museum
MAM Project 06: Nishi Tatzu (to Sep. 24) Installation artist renowned for making outdoor spaces into indoor artworks. Mori Art Museum. Roppongi Metro Station. ¥1,500. 10am–10pm. (Tue. until 5pm.) Tel. 03-6406-6100. www.mori.art.museum
Treasures from the Topkapi Palace (to Sep. 24) Treasures dating back to the Ottoman Empire in Istanbul. Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum. Ueno Station (JR, Metro). ¥1,400. 9am–5pm. Closed Mon. Tel. 03-3823-6921. www.tobikan.jp