The Sixth Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

147 Shinji Ohmaki Dissolving into light It is often said that artists ‘transform spaces’, yet their approaches vary greatly. The works of Shinji Ohmaki transform space, but not by assimilation; rather, by dissimilation. 1 Aristotle wrote that ‘Art imitates nature’; Ohmaki’s works neither imitate nature nor try to be natural. Instead, they make us recognise that we, as human beings, are ‘others’, existing outside the natural laws of space. I remember the first time I walked into Ohmaki’s 2002 installation ECHO . I felt a sense of dislocation as the bright flowers drawn with food colouring on the floor began to blur and disintegrate from the impact of my own footsteps, and were left as a stain on the floor. I was the one who destroyed the beauty of the work. Works that encourage audience participation, and require viewers to complete them, tend to be united under the banner of ‘relational’ or ‘interactive’ art. In the case of ECHO , however, the installation dissimilates us, making us aware that the beauty of the flowers is artificial on several levels. It is created by human hands and, furthermore, drawn in artificial food colouring, the result of human desire to make natural colours and flavours more intense. It is the viewer who collapses this artificiality. According to the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, flowers and plants are not intended to be beautiful; it is nature’s rationality that gives them beauty. However, beauty created by people is motivated by a desire that Kant called ‘purpose’. 2 At first glance, Ohmaki’s works often appear seductive and serene, perhaps because of their accessibility and use of appealing motifs, such as flowers, soap bubbles and light. On the other hand, the works gently point out that human life and energy motivated by desire or ‘purpose’ can sometimes be violently transformed — and this transformation may not always be welcome. Still, Ohmaki does not place us in a double bind; rather, his works offer multifarious viewpoints, particularly in his ‘Liminal Air’ series started in 2003. These massive installations invite us to experience multiple ideas of ‘liminality’, including the reversal of inside and outside, the visible and invisible, body and spirit, and life and death. In 2003, Ohmaki played with physiological and spatial liminality, covering the entire ceiling of the Tokyo Wonder Site Hongo gallery space with a large cascade-like structure made of plaster, which reached down to the floor. Later that year, at Gallery A4 (A-quad) in Tokyo, Ohmaki constructed a new version of the work by suspending approximately 120 000 braided nylon ropes from the ceiling. In 2007, at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, this work was developed further to create Liminal Air – descend – 2007 . Here, Ohmaki hung approximately 120 000 braided nylon ropes from the ceiling in a specially constructed glass space filled with subdued lighting. The work crystallised a concept he drew from a scene in the 1988 Japanese anime film Akira , in which the lead character’s spirit becomes fused with his body, which dissolves into light and then transforms into energy. The white ropes and white light surround viewers in the glass space, merging them into the glowing installation like the character in the film. Liminal Air – descend – 2007–09 is a work inviting an experience of dissolution, in which we become fused with our environment. In Ohmaki’s most recent installation, Vacuum Fluctuation 2009, shown at Tokyo Wonder Site Shibuya, the dregs of consumer society — represented by tonnes of industrial slag — gradually fell to the floor from a small hole in the ceiling during the course of the exhibition. Like a grisly hourglass, the work registered how human beings are consuming the earth’s energy and rapidly destroying its environment. Shinji Ohmaki’s practice is beautiful. The seductiveness and serenity of his work may perhaps overshadow the fact that his practice also works as a warning to contemporary society. Human beings are a part of nature, but will be dissimilated easily, as Ohmaki’s work tells us, if we do not pay it enough attention. Yet Ohmaki never becomes cynical. He maintains hopes and dreams, and tries to encourage us to coexist with our natural environment — by communicating through art. Shihoko Iida Endnotes 1 ‘Dissimilation’ means to become dissimilar or less similar to one’s environment. In this essay, the word means that a viewer becomes alien in the installation space by invading and destroying its spatial harmony, and comes to realise his/her isolated existence in the environment. 2 See Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Judgement, 1790, trans. Shinoda, Hideo, Iwanami Shoten, Japan, 1964.