Reports    Published 13/09/11

How Much of the World Can We Know?

Yokohama Triennale 2011: Our Magic Hour
Yokohama Museum and BankART Studio NYK
6 August–6 November 2011

by KANAE HASEGAWA

Launched in 2001, and now in its tenth year, Yokohama Triennale has brought together internationally known artists – particularly in the previous three events, including French Daniel Buren, Serbian Marina Abramovi?, Swiss duo Peter Fischli and David Weiss, and Thai Rirkrit Tiravanija. This year, the exhibition features over 300 works by 77 artists and one group representing more than 20 countries.

These works loosely question the extent of our perceptions of the world, expressed in the exhibition’s title, How Much of the World Can We Know? Coming as it does after the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami, the exhibition provides a way for artists around the world to support a country still reeling from the disintegration of their everyday lives, while delving into the difficult questions which such catastrophes raise.

To see most of the works, visitors must travel between two venues: Yokohama Museum of Art and NYK Waterfront Warehouse (BankART Studio NYK), a former warehouse turned into an art complex. The Yokohama Museum of Art has chosen its rooftop for the showcase, where the cheerful neon-panel work our magic hour, by Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone, welcomes visitors. The exhibition actually begins in the forecourt with an array of statuettes of primitive forms and ends with photographs of flowers that evoke an offering to past lives. Similarly at NYK Waterfront Warehouse, the roots of life on earth are suggested at the start with a real tree trunk, the root hanging down from the ceiling, and end with a video of cherry blossoms blooming and digitally created footage of runners wearing GPS as homage to people in distressed areas.

Some of the Triennale artists play with everyday objects in a lighthearted or cerebral manner such as Italian artist Massimo Bartolini’s work Organi (2008). In one museum gallery, along with other works of art, the artist installed pipe tubes assembled into scaffolding that plays a musical score, thus functioning like a pipe organ. The viewer is left to decide whether the piece is more appropriate to a museum setting, or a construction site, or as a vehicle of the sacred in a church. Japanese painter Manabu Ikeda’s works are meticulous depictions of familiar animals (eg tigers or zebras) as well as creatures of the artist’s own invention. Ikeda’s portraits are real to the point that we are convinced that such creatures exist before us even though we have never seen them.

Paris-based curator Akiko Miki explained that “With Google Earth on our computer, we may be able to observe the Arctic glacier melt; we can see the surface of the moon. We tend to think that now we understand everything. But there is more to the world than science and technology can reveal and explain”.

Some artists deliver through their works a message about means of communication in the digital age. One dramatic example is Yoko Ono’s site-specific TELEPHONE IN MAZE, an installation of a telephone box placed in a clear acrylic maze. To reach the telephone one must navigate through a winding pathway. The telephone rings occasionally, with the result that a lucky few visitors will be able to talk to the artist, who is calling from New York City and from other countries. The inference is that, while deep human communication may be difficult to achieve today, it might also be very easy given the available technology.

Japanese artist Lyota Yagi works with the notion of time, rather than signals carried through space. The artist uses varying meters of used cassette tape to wind a spherical ball and scratch its surface with a stylus so that the fragmented noise from the videotape can be heard. Although the noises hardly makes sense, the work demonstrates that a spherical ball made with a 120-minute videotape will be larger than that made by a 90-minute cassette tape and offers a tangible view of different spans of time. “The speed of our daily lives, the technology, has made our notion of time quite different than it was ten years ago,” Miki commented.

Viewing different artworks displayed next to each other and noting their relation to each other also makes us consider the notion of time. Throughout the museum, early 20th-century Surrealist paintings from the permanent collection appear next to the contemporary pieces. Director General of Yokohama Triennale Eriko Osaka, who is also the director of Yokohama Museum of Art, says that, “Looking at early 20th-century art next to 21st-century art, one will feel the former pieces are as fresh as the works made more than 80 years later. I hope that visitors will think for themselves about what ‘new’ means.”

Korean artist Han Sungpil brought a work in which a Parisian building transforms into something entirely different. In Melting (2008), he says, he is influenced by surrealist pieces and feels honoured to have his own work displayed next to Surrealist paintings.

Yokohama is located more than 200 miles away from the area that was hit by the earthquake. Here life appears to be unchanged, but under the life-as-usual surface there remains the shock and surprise. “It is a miracle that the Triennale ever opened,” said Osaka. “We were supposed to hold a press conference for the Triennale on 11 March. About 10 minutes before we were about to start, the earthquake shook us. After that, we had to discuss whether staging such an exhibition is appropriate.”

But as history has proven, art can make sense of the insensible and tragic, and lighten everyday burdens and major disasters. At the Yokohama Triennale, artists from around the globe are sharing this wisdom.