A message from Tokyo

Hello Lamb: The Perspectives of Elsewhere
Curated by Michelle Armistead
rm 103, Achilles House
4 September - 27 September 2008.

This unusual exhibition at rm 103 is a collective that travelled to Japan to participate in a one day art fair in Tokyo and to invite some Japanese artists to strut their stuff in Aoteroa. It is energetic, colourful and a lot of fun to visually rummage through, despite being in a darkened room (if you want to see non-electrical works like the ceramics of Tessa Laird you have to cheat and sneakily turn the room lights on) and despite much of it being condensed onto a freestanding array of shelves.

Shelves are not a good way of art presentation but it suits portable items through convenience. Tobias Berger did this in Sao Paulo (2004) and I always felt he insulted the chosen artists with such a shonky display.

Too much proximity creats visual sludge. In rm 103 it is a major project to determine which artist is responsible for which item and what those things are actually made of. Many works are in an adjacent room and are easier to look at simply because they are more spread out.

Yet it is possible to concentrate - and be rewarded. Here is a sample of works I personally enjoyed:

Brydee Rood: her illuminated, glowing plastic kittys with applied baked-on Fimo.

Ryuzo Nishida: his sensational photograph of mum, dad, baby girl and pet cat, all wearing cardboard funnels around their necks to prevent any scratching of flea bites or imbibing resident ticks.

Keng-Pin Hsu: a video of various small articles being pummelled by descending ping-pong balls.

Tessa Laird: her ceramic version of Roland Barthes’ famous Empire of Signs.

Go Watabe: a shimmering screen of magazine headlines cut from glossy paper covers, activated by a hidden fan.

Ichiro Endo’s video Go for Future. Part of its text, which is stated one or two words at a time, and spoken in hesitant halting English, reads: open your eyes and open your mind...this is a message for love and peace and for future… a message from Tokyo. Let’s start together.

Genda Yoshinaga: colourful cardboard box covers of him in mid air energetically leaping at different sites around the city.

Kimita Hattori: Rain, a fluffed-up piece of cottonwool held aloft on spindly wire legs. Hilarious.

Ichiro Endo again: a video of said screaming artist noisily running into walls within the city centre - and being totally ignored by surrounding crowds. His Message from Toyko is on the same dvd.

Kennyuu Oku: a couple of bouquets of plastic flowers, forlorn and abandoned.

Takashi Otaguru: terrific video by him of himself walking rapidly through busy footpaths, and ringing a bike bell when he approaches congested areas - so people can let him through. Highlight of the exhibition.

Daisuke Watanabe: three elegant photographs of social activities with the faces cut out in small circles. A bit like Baldessari but without the colour.

Koshi Kawachi: a series of passport photographs glued on to pieces of sushi attached to a cutting board.

Kakuro Sugimoto: three large bits of driftwood, mesmerisingly covered by small fluorescent yellow and red fishing floats. Illogical, but compelling.

This entertaining and vibrant exhibition is well worth visiting, especially while the Daniel Webby ‘gymnastics’ show is also open on the third floor upstairs. Don't miss it.

Unusual 'abstraction'

Salvatore Panatteri
Rm 103, Achilles House
10 September – 4 October 2008

Sydney artist Salvatore Panatteri has a room in R103 in which he is showing two works on two walls, each an arrangement of 4-5 green and black rectangular panels fronted by clear acrylic. These minimal works are similar in style to the image above from another show. They are related to digital photography using the reproductive process as a kind of readymade. Small black squares are set in vivid green fields, like road markings, crenellations or pixels.

The colour process is Chroma Key on anodized aluminium. The works are intended as a sort of abstraction that is also a critique of individuality. Chroma Key is the method in film or television where a special masking background behind a ‘moving’ figure is used for the insertion other backdrops later. In Panatteri’s hands it seems a metaphor for social context or historical background.

As individual units or as sets, there is little effective dynamic of placement, no nuance of compositional setting. The lines and their alignments lack tension. The artist appears not to be interested in such visual appeal, perhaps because that would contradict his premise denying creative innovation outside the social.

Wonderful to have this Australian project here, but visually and conceptually (in my view) it seems lacklustre. I can’t get too excited about this ideational gesture. However next week Panatteri participates in a group show at Newcall with Julian Dashper and Simon Ingram. I’m looking forward to seeing how that turns out. In this show three quite different artists will be put together showing three chronologically spaced apart works each. A unusual combination.

Chromatic Slivers

Tilman: Lost and Found; Concrete Findings
rm 103
14 August - 30 August 2008

Belgian artist and curator, Tilman, is pretty well unknown in this country, but he now has a show of his own work in rm 103 and is about to present an exhibition of thirty international abstractionists in The Physics Room in Christchurch called My Eyes Keep me in Trouble. Both projects look very exciting.

His four portable paintings in Auckland look like the above image but use stronger pastel (lolly) colours, with two circular holes cut near the two top corners. They look like the rectangular palettes that oil painters use. He also has a large yellowy-green wall painting painted directly on the opposite wall.

Tilman's movable paintings are mouth-wateringly gorgeous. Sexy in the way the front plane of colour interacts with slivers of other coloured panels sandwiched behind it. Little skinny bits of thin rectangular sections peek out at you from the sides. You can barely see them from the front. They are reminiscent in their delicate linear (but chromatically punchy) nuances of some of the works of Imi Knoebel, but lighter (in weight) and smaller.

This is a fabulous show. The best work I personally have ever seen in rm 103. It’s a class act in one small room. Hats off to rm 103 for presenting it. It’s stunning.

Exhibition with two balls

Boris Dornbusch & Daniel Webby: I always say the contrary to what you say. I always say the same as you.
rm103, Auckland
28 February - 15 March 2008

The title of this show is one of those riddle-like exercises in paradox that searches for meaning in the face of illogical contradiction, like the famous example, a philosopher from Crete who announced ‘all Cretans are liars.’

The two rooms at rm 103 are thematically linked, but not in a manner that is overtly super-tight. Dornbusch's video is hilarious: at the centre of its bottom edge we see a basket-ball hoop, around which are repeated shots at goal, all failures.

Webby’s adjacent room shows a basket-ball on the floor surrounded by broken glass. It has come through the window, and left a large hole in its centre.

Taped to the ball is a mobile phone, which when rung – using a number provided on the wall – tells you ‘this number is not permitted to receive calls.’

Oddly, parts of the blurb on the gallery site seems more appropriate for Gambia Castle than rm103:
Two like things may be considered members of a set, thus the body which emerges is that of the set, with the constituent members lost.

Like the current Tahi Moore show at Gambia Castle, lack of success is a theme here, but encased within a riddling title. The video in particular is quite wonderful. Even funnier than Steve Carr. Well worth a visit.