Naoshima

Last week Tomoko and I drove to some neighboring prefectures for a short bit of travel. The highlight was definitely Naoshima in Kagawa prefecture. Naoshima is a small island in the Seto Inland Sea that is known primarily for its art and architecture. In addition to several large sculptures dotting the landscape around the island, there are several buildings designed by renowned architect Tadao Ando, some of which house artworks by various artists, including James Turell and Walter DeMaria.

Maybe those names don't mean anything to most people (they didn't to me) but the whole experience was amazing. Stepping into the Chichu art museum was like stepping into an alternate universe. I felt like I had wandered into something like the world of Mirrormask. That particular museum was a kind of winding white building that penetrates three stories into the earth. It really only has 4 exhibits. One was a very very white room holding several enormous Monet paintings. It looked cool, but it was certainly the most conventional of the exhibits. The other exhibits were a first of its kind to me. Those three artists I named--I can't even describe them. They could be sculptors? There were works of art that I could walk into, interact with, experience, breathe...I mean, Tadao Ando was the most obvious, as his museum is itself a building that people enter--and thus it creates an environment like an alternate universe. But I was so impressed by Turrell's work in the Chichu museum. You walk into a room that's kind of dimly lit in a burnt orange. There are black marble stairs against a wall, and they seem to lead up to a large glowing purple rectangle on the wall. The purple rectangle looks like a glowing sheet of paper or perhaps a light projection. You walk up the gleaming marble stairs to just inches away from the purple rectangle, and it still looks like...otherworldly. The guide prompts you to put out your hands and you realize that it is actually an opening to a room. He then prompts you to step up, through the glowing doorway and into the purple room. Everything is a weird unearthly shade, and even kind of hazy, as if stepping through a fog. You can explore the room, see where the light source is coming from, feel the rounded edges...I mean seriously, otherworldly. Like being kidnapped by aliens.

A similar piece of work was another Tadao Ando/James Turell collaboration. There is an area of Naoshima known as the art house project, where artists have taken old homes or shrines and kind of reformed them. This other building was also kind of an experiential light design art. You walk in to a large warehouse...and simply by virtue of a few turns and well placed walls, arrive in total, complete darkness. It was downright frightening--blink all you want, wave your hands inches in front of your face, and there was absolutely nothing. You sit down with others at a bench and kind of just stare into the darkness and wait. Waiting is unnerving. You blink a lot and kind of see the floaters in your eyes. Then you kind of see some patches of very very faint light, orangeish maybe, greenish maybe, float across your totally dark field of vision. Are those floaters? Is that a product of your brain adjusting to the darkness? Or are you really seeing those lights undulating and pulsating in faint blobs? Finally you realize that they must be real lights, because the rectangular shape of the far wall settles into a faintly lighted form. If you wave your hands in front of your eyes, you can kind of see the outline of them now. And then, the guide says, please walk towards the light. I was with Tomoko at the time and, still genuinely freaked out, still largely in the dark, clasped her hand as we both walked forwards. Reaching the far wall revealed that it, too, was a kind of rectangular opening that cleverly hid the light source. The lights sources on either side that were responsible for the undulating blobs were cleverly hidden by undulations in the ceiling. They had settled into an orange-ish color, I think, and were no longer undulating. I'll never know if I imagined the color changing and the blobs moving, because the lights didn't look as though they were capable of moving or changing color, especially silently.

Turell is like, the ultimate light designer.


Anyways, those were two of my brief out-of-this-world experiences. Wayy cool. I'm addicted.