Does the museum contain the art or does the art contain the museum? This is the kind of question I sometimes find myself asking when I visit the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art. This is because among all the museums in Tokyo, the Hara sees itself less as a simple white cube in which to neutrally display artworks and more as a kind of collaborator and participant in the art.
This is also why it makes perfect sense that it is hosting "The Dream of Polifilo," the first solo exhibition by Nicolas Buffe, a French-born Tokyo-based artist. Buffe has the kind of expansive and polymorphous imagination that can't sit politely within the frame of a painting or even stay within the walls of a gallery or museum.
This is evident as soon as you pass through the gates of the Hara, a delightful, Art Deco-ish building set in its own grounds in a well-to-do residential neighbourhood in Tokyo. The entrance has been transformed into a giant cartoon dog's head, and to see the show you must venture into the beast's belly — the museum building itself.