“Still Alive”: The two short words that serve as the overall theme of this year’s Aichi Triennale suggest a mountain of meaning. They could be a provocation, after a statue symbolizing wartime “comfort women” sparked controversy at the 2019 triennale and, after a torrent of threats and complaints, was temporarily shut down. Or they could be an expression of hope, after a three-year period in which the global pandemic turned cultural gatherings into public health risks. Or they could be a more primal declaration.
That’s also true of the work that inspired the theme, on view at the Aichi Arts Center in Nagoya through Oct. 10. Conceptual artist On Kawara’s “I Am Still Alive” is a series of roughly 900 telegrams sent over 30 years with variations on that basic sentiment. He initially sent three messages in 1969: “I am not going to commit suicide don’t worry”; “I am not going to commit suicide worry”; and “I am going to sleep forget it.” The subsequent 30 years of telegrams, with the simpler message, “I am still alive,” became a new series and, ultimately, a moving piece of conceptual art. The implication is this: If there was any reason to think the artist might no longer exist, here was affirmation of his life.
But like Kawara’s other word art, such as his famous “Today” series in which he inscribes nothing more than the date he completed each painting, the viewer who lacks context has very little to hold onto. Behind their glass cases, the messages exist as far-away, abstract ideas rather than material works of art. And indeed, because they’re telegrams, Kawara himself never actually touched the pieces of paper that we see as part of the exhibition.
Near the room dedicated to Kawara is “7,502,733,” by Yuki Okumura. There, objects seemingly unrelated to one another are strewn haphazardly across the room.
In 1969, critic Lucy Lippard organized an exhibition titled “557,087” for the Seattle Art Museum in the United States. Rather than send works they made, many artists sent instructions from which Lippard constructed the pieces. For the triennale, Okumura has made works responding to that exhibition, choosing 30 of the pieces and re-creating them himself, with the goal of tracing the processes of the artist’s ideas to produce his own results.
A re-creation of a reference that was itself a re-creation of someone else’s instructions to begin with — if that sounds hard to follow, you’re not alone. The result is a room that looks like a gallery full of the works by various artists, but were in fact all made by one man. The work may leave some viewers wanting, too convoluted a premise and too lengthy a backstory from which to draw any immediate pleasure.
The abstract and conceptual, however, stand in stark contrast to the tactile and concrete presented at the arts festival. With that in mind, and in minor defiance of the more high-concept works on display, here are four compelling textures from artists shown at the Aichi Arts Center in Nagoya.
‘The Spirit Is Dreaming’
Rita Ponce de Leon’s interactive “The Spirit Is Dreaming” exhibit is a room full of marimba-like instruments. Each wooden bar has words or phrases such as “blink” and “exciting things” chosen by poets Yaxkin Melchy and Shinnosuke Niiro printed on it, and visitors can rearrange them and use mallets to play poems of their making.
‘Event Horizon’
Roman Ondak’s “Event Horizon” comprises an oak tree trunk sliced into 100 pieces. Each disk is marked with its human calendar year and a corresponding major world event, like “Germany reunited” and “Warsaw pact signed,” spanning 1917 to 2016. Each day a disk is taken from the floor and added to the wall.
Painterly West African textiles
Abdoulaye Konate’s vibrant textiles made from cloth strips are inspired by the style of Senufo musicians of the northern Cote d'Ivoire and southeastern Mali. The colors are symbols for “life, origins, peace, the sun and nature,” among others, with blue representing both water and Mali.
'Bakudan' works
Yoshikazu Kodera is an artist with a disability who began making ceramics in the assisted living facility he moved to in his 20s. He reportedly started making the works in his bakudan, or bomb, series, after he happened to hear about the existence of bombs from the news. Whether they represent the bombs or their aftermath, they’re simultaneously hardened and alive.
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