reviews nobuko tsuchiya
Nobuko Tsuchiya:
oNce upoN a Time, iN a
disTaNT place There was
a parkiNg fish projecT
scai the bathhouse, tokyo
18 M ay – 30 June
London-based Japanese artist Nobuko
Tsuchiya has previously shown at London’s
Anthony Reynolds Gallery and elsewhere
in Europe. This, her third solo show, is
her first in her home country. Eleven new
sculptures, carefully laid out in the spacious
gallery at SCAI, resonate as one large poetic
installation.
At first glance Tsuchiya’s work provokes
the question, ‘Does it move?’ Assembling
various kinds of materials – elements from
everyday life, specialist medical tools and
electronic parts, wires and silicon tubes, she
delicately builds unique shapes that could pass
as vehicles or gadgets, or in other instances as
fragile monsters. In the work Silicon SANPO
Ruler (all works 2007) a resin-coated table
stands on two pieces of wood resembling
skis. On the tabletop are miniature lamps, lint
and fibres clipped to wire. Beside it stands a
thin pole, like a fishing rod or an antenna for
a radio-control unit. It recalls the homespun
gadgetry of Fischli and Weiss’s film The Way
Things Go (1987) or, for a Japanese audience,
the kids’ TV programme PythagoraSwitch
(2002), in which continuous movement is
attained by the domino effect of consecutive
actions. All her works suggest some sense of
movement, but there is in fact nothing interactive here; this sense of potential motion is a trick of the imagination.
Silicon SANPO Ruler, 2007,
mixed media, 90 x 187 x 113 cm.
The pinkish glossy round object ‘alee…?’ is a small dome, its inside covered with thin white fibreglass. Photo: keizo kioku.
Tsuchiya often uses fibreglass; soft and comfortable to look at, it’s an itchy and annoying material to work with. Soft
courtesy shiraishi contemporary
art inc, tokyo
or hard? Motile or stable? Such deceptive manipulations of our perception are a continuous theme of Tsuchiya’s
sculpture. Her pet-size sculptures ‘…hee…’, ‘…haa…’,‘…mmm…’ – Japanese equivalents to ‘uh-huh’ – are a cute trio: a
little table ‘laying’ translucent eggs, a flat round shaggy rug and a collapsible aluminium ribcage hung with a small
striped curtain. Seeing this provokes the strange feeling that these are bizarre, crooked creatures from another world:
Japanese folklore traditionally entertained the existence of yohkai, fairies that lived anywhere from the kitchen stove
to the loo. The world was supposedly full of yohkai, who coexisted with people, but industrialisation and the speedy
growth of the economy in the twentieth century made it hard for them to survive, and so they gradually disappeared
from view. Tsuchiya’s sculptures are like yohkai for the twenty-first century – made from the waste of modern life and
inhabiting the pound shop, flea market or junk pile, coming out to wander quietly at night.
Tsuchiya’s invitation into the world of her imagination is a confusing, amusing experience without end. The
inhabitants of this world – imperfect, patched sculptures – are both comical and pathetic, like creatures made
unconsciously by a child playing alone. Just as the yohkai never showed up in daylight, these works lurk in solitude
and live in a dark fantasy world where imagination, far from logic, emerges from darkness and silence, the source of
Tsuchiya’s fertile creativity. Chiaki Sakaguchi
135 Artreview
NEW Sept_REVIEWS.indd 21 7/8/07 15:58:35
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