The Seventh Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

Takahiro Iwasaki creates ethereal encounters. He experiments with perception by crafting materials to playfully look at the everyday. Through recreations of structures and environments, he engages in a dialogue between objects and their contexts, while paradoxically conveying a sense of spectacle and fragility. As objects, buildings are commonly defined by their use, however, Iwasaki reconfigures form and scale to generate new experiences of the familiar. Iwasaki has described his recent works as ‘phenotypic remodelling’, referring to the biological concept of an organism’s visible characteristics being influenced by genetic and environmental factors, and to the medical term for ‘incomplete repair’. 1 His ‘Out of disorder’ series reframes urban landscapes with quotidian materials — electrical poles made from pencil lead, buildings made of stacked books and shoeboxes, cranes made from bookmarks, objects emerging from landscapes constructed of socks and towels. Referencing ubiquitous commodities, Iwasaki inspires curiosity and evokes wonder through meticulous and delicate detail. Seemingly worthless matter is transformed into sculptural artistry, while buildings and architectural structures are reduced to tiny, fragile, unproductive objects. For instance, roadside shops and billboards built with discarded packaging present a miniature ‘phenotype’ of global consumer culture, 2 and audiences are offered telescopes to view works from across the gallery space, exposing miniature scenes made from dust particles and hair. In Cartesian terms, sensory perception alone is insufficient to locate meaning. When aided by the knowledge of varying manifestations of objects and materials, our minds are able to perceive more accurate meanings. 3 As Iwasaki confronts audiences with new manipulations, conventional understandings are similarly tested and extended. By using unexpected scales and contexts to reconstruct urban, industrial and architectural environments, he urges us to question our surroundings: the machines, buildings, constructions, materials and elements of our environment, and how they are used, re-used, evaluated, considered and, ultimately, discarded. Iwasaki’s Reflection Model (Perfect Bliss) 2010–12 is from a series of sculptural installations designed to reframe the familiar by depicting structures with considerable cultural importance. This sculpture draws on a well-known, historic structure in Japanese culture, and how it has come to possess multiple meanings. This work is modelled on the Houdo (Phoenix Pavilion), constructed in 1053 in Uji, near Kyoto, as part of the Byodo-in Temple, a remarkably well-preserved example of Heian period architecture. Meticulously recreating the structure from the traditional building material of hinoki (Japanese cypress), and avoiding embellishment and colour, Iwasaki’s exquisite work shows a respect for the materials, techniques, architecture and cultural significance of the building. The pavilion is famous for its reflection in the limpid water of an adjacent small lake, considered to reveal the earthly embodiment of the magnificence of the Buddhist paradise. 4 Iwasaki recreates this double-imaging in his sculpture with a seamlessly mirrored construction, devoid of distinction between the ‘real’ and the ‘reflected’ building. Suspended in the gallery space, the sculpture meditatively evokes a celestial quality as well as Zen Buddhist notions of the ephemeral and impermanent: a single moment of reflection is captured which, like the cherry blossom, would otherwise only last a moment. As illustrated on the face of the ten yen coin, the Houdo elicits much broader cultural associations. In this way, the building has already been re-contextualised, becoming a form of currency and a national icon — its static image transforming into a multitude of contexts and uses. Takahiro Iwasaki’s sculptures offer alternative perceptions of our surroundings and our environment. By remodelling existing structures, he offers us new interactions with a wondrous world, one which is already right in front of us. Tarun Nagesh 1 Selina Ting (ed.), ‘Takahiro Iwasaki: Phenotypic remodeling’, Initiart Magazine , <http://www.initiartmagazine.com/gallery.php?galleryid=1 56&date=1288641779>, viewed 13 June 2012. 2 Satoru Nagoya, ‘Takahiro Iwasaki’, Flash Art International , vol.44, no.276, January–February 2011, p.108. 3 René Descartes, Donald A Cress (trans.), Discourse on Method and Meditations of First Philosophy , Hackett Publishing Company, Indianapolis and Cambridge, 1988, pp.67–8. 4 Adolfo Tamburello, Monuments of Civilisation: Japan , Cassell, London, 1975, p.76. TAKAHIRO IWASAKI Modelling another view 130