Volume 04, Number 21

Diversions
By Owen Schaefer

Isamu Wakabayashi's Daisies

When Isamu Wakabayashi passed away in 2003 at the age of 67, the world of sculpture lost a huge figure. Recognized abroad, but respected as a master in Japan, the sculptor produced several decades worth of work, sculpting almost exclusively in heavy metals. While the show entitled Daisy may not be the overdue retrospective that Wakabayashi deserves, it does brush against a recurring theme in his work: the garden.

From early in his career, Wakabayashi was exploring, or perhaps deconstructing, the clash between nature and manufacture through the concept of gardens.

Most famously, between 1996 and 2000, Wakabayashi became involved with a project to save a forest in the town of Hinode, which was designated to become a dump for Tokyo garbage. Organizers had bought up a land trust in the forest, and along with help from poet Gozo Yoshimasu, Wakabayashi proceeded to plan and build a site-specific installation, which Yoshimasu named The Green Constellation of the Unicorn. Stone steps, tables and benches were built in such a way that they appeared to be naturally occurring parts of the garden area, and around the site Wakabayashi arranged 36 towering copper plates on which he etched images of the trees that would be bulldozed, creating an artificial forest in memoriam even before the work crews rolled in. Despite support and testimony by respected Japanese artists, and even foreign artists Frank Stella and Bill Viola, the bid failed, and the garden artwork was bulldozed and soon to be buried in garbage.

Wakabayashi imbued much of his work with the idea of memory, as evidence by exhibition titles such as Tree Bark and Vacant Land—a show influenced by his battle for The Green Constellation, a Nagoya show titled Iron and Remembrance and, his influences which to some extent, began with his own memories. As a child, Wakabayashi lived through the bombing of Tokyo, and was struck by the destruction of a fire that burned several warehouses to the ground. The sight of those burned materials and heat-twisted metals moved him deeply, creating a memory he said was “indelible”. Perhaps as a result, Wakabayashi rarely treated steel and iron as materials with which to create figures, so much as figures in themselves—drawing out the essences of metal, sulfur and occasionally wood.

In his works, iron is an earthy substance taken from the ground, rather than something to build with; and like the wartime remains of those Tokyo buildings, it seems to yearn for a return to the ground. The fact that it has been shaped by human hands seems almost incidental.

Wakabayashi's gardens of arranged steel, pitted with melted sulfur are to some small degree an acknowledgment of Japanese traditional gardens, but more likely a reaction to them. If the garden can be considered a place where the order of nature is artificially recreated, Wakabayashi focuses on pointing out the ambiguity between real and false, natural and industrial. Where the traditional garden seeks to freeze time and mimic harmony, Wakabayashi's planned sculpture gardens, in which time is conspicuously present in the form of rust and wear, and where the metals of human industry not only stand in for nature, but compete with it.

He built gardens in which the static elements fight for a kind of life, where growth and death are represented through physical forms and chemical transformations.

While the Tama University Art Museum's show does not re-assemble one of Wakabayashi's gardens, there is little doubt, looking at the rising lines of the various daisy pieces, that they are related to the same theme. Each sculpture is clearly a kind of heavy metal flower, standing alone. They are relatively rare examples of his work being representational, nearly minimalist, and it is possible that they were intended for some future use in a garden arrangement.

Unfortunately, despite the five-year span that the show covers (1993–1998), it has a relatively narrow sculptural focus, especially considering the wide range of Wakabayashi's oeuvre. But there are two added draws to the exhibition. Wakabayashi was a teacher at the Tama Art Museum, and left them a legacy of work. Three pieces from his workshop, which were recently the focus of a collaborative research study to determine whether or not they were attributable to the master himself, have been put on display now for the first time.

Wakabayashi also made thousands of drawings, some related to planning out his work, others simply for the love of it. These drawings have been the focus of several past exhibitions, and there are no less than 200 on display here from the same five-year period as the Daisy works—reason enough to take a look.

Isamu Wakabayashi, Daisy 1993–1998 (Nov. 2–Dec. 16) Wood sculpture from the Japanese master of iron and sulfur. Tama Art University Museum. Hashimoto Station (Keio Line). ¥300. 10am–6pm. Closed Tue. Tel. 042-357-1251. www.tamabi.ac.jp/museum

Listings:

Cultivate: Kazuhiro Kojima & Kazuko Akamatsu / CAt (to Nov. 17) Three huge architectural projects, in three very different locations, by one group. Gallery-Ma. Nogizaka Metro Station. Free. 11am–6pm. (Fri. to 7pm.) Closed Sun. & Mon. Tel. 03-3402-1010. www.toto.co.jp/gallerma
Fumiko Hori Exhibition (to Nov. 18) More than 140 sketches and paintings from the artist's collection of scenes and critters. New Otani Art Museum. Nagatacho Metro Station. ¥700. 10am–6pm Closed Mon. Tel. 03-3221-4111. www.newotani.co.jp/group/museum/
Chiharu Shiota: Trauma / Alltag (to Nov. 24) Solo show of works from the string-obsessed artist. Kenji Taki Gallery. Shinjuku Station (JR, Metro). Free. 12pm–7pm. Closed Sun. & Mon. Tel. 03-3378-6051. www2.odn.ne.jp/kenjitaki/
Cinematic Ginza (to Nov. 25) Film memorabilia from Ginza and its theaters, along with a screening room showing new films by women directors, along with classics. House of Shiseido. Ginza Station (Metro, JR). Admission free. 11am– 7pm. Tel. 03-3571-0401. www.shiseido.co.jp/house-ofshiseido/
Legacy of the Tokugawa—The Glories and Treasures of the Last Samurai Dynasty (to Dec. 2) Military attire, portraits and other belongings of the famous shogunate family and its three branches. Tokyo National Museum. Ueno Station (JR, Metro). 9:30am–5pm. Closed Mon. Tel. 03- 3822-1111. www.tnm.jp/en/
Surrealism and Art—Image and Reality (to Dec. 9) Works by several sovereigns of the surreal. Yokohama Museum of Art. Sakuragicho Station. ¥1,100. 10am–6pm. Closed Thursday. Tel. 045-221-0300. www.yaf.or.jp/yma/
Milkmaid by Vermeer and Dutch Genre Painting (to Dec. 17) Dutch masterworks from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. National Art Center Tokyo. Nogizaka Metro Station. ¥1,500. 10am–6 pm (Fri. to 8pm, closed Tue.) Tel. 03- 6812-9900. www.nact.jp