Schönhauser Allee 167c
10435, Berlin/Germany
// Exhibition 06.–13.01.2008
// Open from 14:00 – 19:00
// 6. Jan open 14:00 – 19:00, 7. and 8. closed
// // 05.01.08 (Sat), 19:00, Opening with concert
Shingo Inao (experimental, original sensor instrument Tosso with electronics)
Artists: Megumi Fukuda, Taro Furukata, Takafumi Hara, Keiko Kimoto, Hirofumi Matsuzaki, Noriko Yamaguchi
While in Berlin, and to our great delight, Alexander, Biz, Nat and I attended this very good show at the great artist space General Public.
Getting there from our hostel was very easy and the only hindrance was a thin film of ice that covered the entire city as the earlier drizzle of that day had frozen. The show was organized by la-condition-japonaise, a group that “tries to explore as well as re-map the diversity of Japanese contemporary cultures and arts”. They are a Berlin based group and this show featured a myriad of Japanese artists whose mediums varied from oil and paint to handmade musical instruments.
Naroki Yamaguchi’s piece really called my attention for its subdued charm. At first glance the sculpture was a net that resembled, or suggested, natural formations and organic growth like that of plants or rivers. Once you got close to it you realized that it was made of printed emails; the nature of which I was not able to peruse due to my ignorance of Japanese but which none-the-less seemed an important factor(to me at least). Would the emails be of personal nature? from the artist? to the artist? Collected?
Very beautiful and loaded piece, the more I think about it the more connotations it brings to mind. One of them being Japan’s historic use of paper and long tradition of origami. Truly awesome piece. Also nets of information and social networking sites.
Also displayed were her book pieces, these were all books that were carefully folded , origami-like, and transformed into free standing sculptures. As I remember, the books were German, English and French in nature. One of them, As Alexander pointed out, carefully highlighting a picture of Nancy Reagan.
These works also took on an old Japanese tradition and infused it with a contemporary twist. Books detached from their original context and turned into art? Funny paradigm.
I really loved this painting. Painted by Keiko Kimoto and for sale for 1400 Euros, it was well worth its asking price. It really was a nice and pleasant painting , the kind of painting that would make Matisse happy. The colors were perfect next to each other and greatly mixed as well as applied. The cat and her hat beautifully contrasted with the lush and carelessly applied blues and greens of the background. This is the kind of painting that allows you to mentally retrace the artist hand and at the same time leaves room for surprises. Again a really nice hearth-warming painting, it really reaffirms the meditative aspect of oil on canvas.
These small paintings by Takafumi Hara were also interesting but more in a didactic or narrative way. The imagery and cognitive relationships created were far more interesting than its controlled and deprived “painting”. They made me think of the medium as not really being necessary but forced. Maybe drawing or illustration would have worked better here? Or wall drawings? Animation?
And then, we the audience got ready for an awesome aural experience.
Coming up next was a performance by Shingo Inao and his original sensor instrument.
First he gave a whole explanation of how the instrument works and maybe even where he came from, all of which was lost to me since I don’t speak German but anyway his bio mentioned him traveling to America and Germany to mentor with a long list of musicians. What I gathered from his performance and the wall text is that the instrument works with a computer program and sensors that respond to the movement of the instrument in real space. In other words: moving the handmade- cello around in space will change the pitch and even volume of the music being played. More about this from him here. 
As you can tell the performance was very fluid and body involved. His style was a mix of arranged music and improvisation, an exciting performance marked by extremes of silence and loud aural sonic booms. He was such and intense performer that by the second piece he blew out the speaker, or overloaded the system, whatever, the last note was this very high pitch noise that made everyone in the room skip a beat. Then it was all over.
His sound was a great mixture of pure electronic blips and fuzz and the subtlety of a cello or string instrument. It created and entire sound environment, fully layered and easily performed with his amazing instrument. He also added distortion and loops by way of pedals, making his performance very hypnotic and noise-like to some extent. His sound reminded me of a breathing and buzzing metropolis coming to life.
Shingo was such a friendly fellow and very proper while we traded business cards.
Then, before we left , I tagged the men’s bathroom .
General Public was an exceptional artist run space. Alexander and I talked to one of the organizers, who lived in Brooklyn for nine years. He gave us great advise in regards to artist visas and the state of artist spaces versus corporate art institutions in Berlin. Unfortunately I forgot his name.
Then the night quickly devolved into drinking:
Smoking:
fighting:
(To the right is our new friend Campbell! Hes from Australia! The other guy is the oldest fucking punk alive!)
and puking:
Too much fun.
