#sineposting

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and for the museum of the day i was Considerably more excited for: the National Museum of Modern Art!! splitting this into two parts for my sanity, main exhibit first

one thing that impressed me about this museum was the overall presentation of descriptions used. a lot of art museums will present some information and context to the piece, but the national museum specifically tried to encourage people to read the text (metaphorically) and engage in Thoughts. it was pretty neat to look at a piece then see what specific emphasize the museum curator wanted to put on something.

For example, Nakanishi Natsuyuki’s piece Compact Object was described like this:

Fish bones, a rubber ball, a clock, seashells, hair.. this egg-shaped object seems to be packed with the contents of a garbage can. Or is it a time capsule, capturing a fleeting moment during a certain era? Nakanishi staged performances by bringing these clusters of everyday objects into public spaces, such as in the streets and on trains. His intent seems to have been to carry a microcosm of the world in his hands rather than to produce a sculpture that sits on a pedestal.

which, imo, does a decent job at explaining the intent but also promoting people to think about the intent going into objects on a level a bit further than just “here’s what this means.” this was pretty consistent in the museum’s presentation, which I really appreciated.

The other thing I thought was incredibly funny was this fucking. diary entry they had on display. keep in mind i was dead on my feet in this museum writing down notes to post to my tumblr blog and then read kishida ryusei’s diary from 1923:

Woke up around 10 o clock with a slight headache. Not surprising since i was up unttl three last night talking with Senge [Motomaro] and others, and that's why I overslept. Took a bath after breakfast. Got on the 1:49 pm train to Tokyo and then a taxi to Shintomiza. The play was about to start. My seat was excellent. Sendai Hagi is a famous kabuki play, but it was the first time I had actually seen it. The scenes performed were: the Bamboo Room, Cooking Rice, Under the Floor, The Showdown, The Scar. All of these were fascinating. I's not often these days that l immerse myself as deeply in kabuki as I did this time.

me, two museums in, feeling a profound kinship with this artist from a century ago writing a diary entry about his hang over but going to tokyo for three plays. as i write notes in my phone about art. incredible.

For actual pieces though there were quite a few:

Kayama Mayazo, Waves in Spring and Autumn thought this piece had a lot of really neat spins on some classic imagery (mountains, seasonal trees, waves/water). I especially liked the details of the waves breaking— the waves themselves were this even, looping/fluid lines but the edges were crashing with noisy scribbles

Komaki Gentaro, Bricks and a Squirrel: this is one of those “can’t explain myself”. the bricks had a very weird wood grain pattern, paired with a squirrel in this frightening black orb, completely surrounded. sometimes ur just a squirrel in an orb

Nomiyama Gyoji, The Withered: i like organic things in weird, inorganic messes. this was like, a rat king but with branches, and it was confusing to look at. enjoyed it a lot.

Kodama Yasue, ambient light - sakura: this is exactly what it says on the tin but for what it is it works really well. it’s just the impression of looking up at Sakura blossoms through sunlight, and man is it effective at it. I think in person this works better just for the size and detail of it- it captures the feeling of looking up through foliage very well and was very pretty to boot

Takanashi Yutaka, Hongo: Mansada Parlor, 6-17-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku from Machi imo all of takanashi’s photos had this very lived in quality to them, like a photo taken of a place that feels deeply familiar and like home. The collection overall has these deep colors and contrasts with mundane settings and a large amount of visual objects/interest, so it made the feel of the piece really nice (photos here)

overall: really solid, probably doesn’t beat the contemporary art museum but that’s just because my taste is what it is. for an art museum though, i really appreciated the approach and curation

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Just signposting (or should that be sineposting?) the latest Synthwave show on Sine FM. Big thanks to George for spinning the new Nightrax. Sine-ing off. ✨🛰️

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Mori Art Museum— this is the type of museum I typically like but not a subject I like because it can feel on the nose (environmentalism/ecology). it’s not Bad as a topic, it’s just evoking a pretty consistent emotion of “this sucks right” and yeah I Know. that being said, while some things a bit on the nose but a good number of stuff that made me feel disquieted and that’s why I go to museums lol so win overall

The museums itself is on top of a tall tower next to a luxury shopping mall (lol). The view from the tour was completely clouded over when I went, which kind of made for a weird foggy ambiance, where the sky-high views were completely whited out until you walked closer and could look through the clouds to see the city below. Pretty cool atmosphere— the particular curation only used natural light which helped.

THAT being said: there was something so. incredibly funny about going to this conceptual art exhibit and, when leaving and going back to transit and passing by fucking Gucci. My brain did cartwheels and I stood in the crowded subway car going ?????? all the way home.

Pieces that stuck out:

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt14900652/

Night Colonies by Apichatpong Weerasethakul

They were playing a short film about bugs taking over this guys room. There’s kind of this initial ambiguity of is the puttering run sound is bugs or rain, but really it’s both. i don’t know what was captivating about this. they had quotes too which were mostly unrelated, and I didn’t really get the point of, but I did like the close ups of bugs. mostly a vibe. there was another piece next by where you’d walk on shells and you got that noise too, so mostly the quiet bug noise + shells + rain was a good mix. what was the point??? look I don’t know.

Quandary Medicinals Roppongi Jed Geys—

This was a neat way to end the exhibit. One of the cooler and more optimistic pieces— basically this guy put together a map of local (like, in the same neighborhood) medicinal plants, then put plants dried and on display and photos of where they were found. (I can’t find this link online lol. betting I wrote the name down wrong)

https://www.mori.art.museum/en/news/2024/01/7078/

The Disturbance - Monira Al Qadiri: LMAO this piece. ok so this pieces is part of all the promotional materials of the museum, front cover with people posing at all. it generally seems like the prototypical selfie bait for a museum— these giants pearls hanging above just enough to pose under. very stunning, cool to look at, cool to pose with.

the promotional materials fail to emphasize that they MUTTER. it’s so funny. oh my god. sorry people watching was so good. you could watch as people got unnerved. 10/10. muttering pearls killed me.

Some additional things I liked but didn’t get the name (b/c there was a no photo policy and I got nervous):

The maggot cage??? I forgot what this was called and I was in a no photo zone and couldn’t write it down. Anyway there was a box where this guy put maggots in and then a lightbulb at the bottom, so the maggots would turn into flies go to the light die and get shunted out a pipe. dire. then he cast the flies in resin and it’s in a museum, in a little corner away from everything else. this was my biggest “um???? Excuse me???”

overall: enjoyed the vibes here even if the subject matter was not it. glad I went but glad I ditched the group to go because everyone else im traveling with would not have vibed with this HAHA.

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rain asmr lol

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trip so far. went to fushimi inari shrine in the fog and rain which was neat.

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ok final museum thoughts, the national museum of modern art’s rotating exhibit: Nakahira Takuma’s Burn Overflow

ok i love photography exhibits HAHA i think the last few rotating exhibits ive really liked have been photography. this doesn’t beat the last one i went to, just due to my own personal biases, but it’s really solid

and, credit to the curators again, really well presented in terms of ordering the exhibit. this time it was by time, which is pretty normal, but it worked well. the mix of photos, journals, and photo books was also really nice.

there’s a couple of distinct themes that really worked for me w nakahira’s photography, the prevalence of them waxing/waning over his career. for the main themes and photos that stuck with me:

his earlier work especially has a lot of stark contrasts with dark colors and blurry subjects that give the photos on the whole the feeling of a memory. (chapter one here) (or this photo specifically of the ocean)

a lot of his subjects are just… city life, which i appreciate. it’s like a catalog of the city’s mundanities and anxieties. there’s a deliberate focus on making photos that capture the mundane cracks in the pavement type shots. See The Streets, or Traces of Terror (what a name!!!!)

his later work, especially as it gets into color work and post-medical issues work especially loses the sense of anxiety imo— they are still beautiful captures of memories in the way a brain remembers images (vs how a typical photograph would) but it loses the pointed attack at the mundane effort of living. i appreciate both takes but definitely gravitate towards the anxiety

this was shorter than I thought, but I couldn’t take photos and can’t find good references online of the pictures I liked OTL however I really loved this exhibit and will look up art books probably

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art museum time: this time the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum

this is where i the planner fucked up— we went to the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum the day they were setting up the student exhibits which is a pity because the previews looked cool.

instead we just went to the rotating exhibit which was Impressionism, which is pretty but not really why i got to art museum (which is to feel like I’ve been punched in the face emotionally). roughly, there’s two categories of impressionist paintings I ended up enjoying:

Pieces with a heavy emphasis on light and atmosphere, and absolutely any piece with fog. imo these kind of lend well to Impressionism and lend well to my taste (loves fog). Bruce Crane’s A November Scene and George Inness’s Pool in the Woods played well to my mysterious fog love, and Childe Hassam’s The Breakfast Room’s sheer curtains and fuzzy background landscaped played into lighting. Overall if there’s a bit of mystery or mundane settings with strong mood lighting i liked it.

The Other category I liked was anything that deliberately amplified the saturation of the piece to make a lasting impression— so, the exact opposite of the foggy pieces HAHA. broadly enjoyed things like Toyosaku Saito’s Remaining Light or Paul Signac’s Gulf Juan. Basically the deliberate saturation to make the scenery a bit past reality, but within the feel of what you experience seeing that imagery in reality. there were not enough of these but maybe it made the impression of the few there much larger.

Unrelated to EITHER of the categories my favorite piece shocked me!!! It was a portrait. this never happens. Portrait of Mrs. William Clark by William Merritt Chase was striking to me. Maybe it’s just a mix of the piece being unfinished, and of Mrs William Clark herself’s direct and smug expression. i know the sign said it was unfinished because he used it as practice for another painting or whatever but i like to think she smote him before he could.

and that is the end of the metropolitan art museum!!! worth the trip to ueno park but not my favorite. i went to the national museum of modern art too which i enjoyed Much more but that means my notes are longer and ill post after food probably.

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more art museum posting, this time from tokyo. as always this is just my personal diary/blog of art thoughts lol. im no art expert in any way ever

this time: the museum of contemporary art tokyo

splitting this into two bits, the rotating exhibit and the main exhibit. overall really enjoyed the exhibit, tho i don’t think it beats tower of babel it still had enough slightly unsettling stuff for me to enjoy it.

Yasuko Toyoshima

overall: enjoyed this exhibit, i think the pieces i liked most were the ones that were slightly off in an uncanny valley way. a lot of her pieces were clean in presentation, sometimes almost cute about it, but with just enough going wrong with it to ring some alarm bell in my brain

for an example here, she had a full set of pencil cases where the pencils were sharpened from the inside out— so at first blush it was like looking two pencils in the case, but actually looking at it longer you realized that’s not quite it. a lot of the pieces were like that— simple and ordinary until you noticed what was wrong

i think my favorite was a collection of carved wood pieces, carving out one strand of wood at a time until several boards were covered in these tiny, curled shavings. there’s both like, precision to actually getting the shavings to curl but not fall off, and just. the type of emotion you’d put into doing a meaningless, repeated action over and over and over again. destroying something by carving into it again and again. “emotions clawing at something” vibes.

Main Exhibit

The Kanto Earthquake exhibit had a really strong presentation— the rough sketches of devastation, the very detailed extremely large sketches of post war life, ending on a quaint sketch of a cat under an umbrella. i don’t think I’ve seen an art exhibit with such an emphasis on sketches like this, and i really enjoyed the like. absolute focus of representation of real, human life here— i get burnt out by seeing a lot of detailed paintings that don’t really focus on the humanity of a city/location, but the sketch collection really used every line toward that.

Fukuda Naoyo’s embroidered books were incredible to see. maybe im just an embroidery fan, but the contrast of these beige/tan books being cut into with straight clean lines, contrasted with the natural mossy greens of the embroidery. liked it a lot

Mitsushima Takayuki had a piece called tactile adventure that said you could touch it but it felt like a thought experiment that tormented me. i made eye contact with the security guard and just walked away. forbidden fruit

The Tadanori Yokoo exhibit made me feel like i was getting punked. The exhibit signage in English just went over how he used water imagery in his pieces, while the pieces themselves were an almost anxiety-inducing collage of colors, dark humor, and like tits. it was incredibly funny to me, as sad as i was not having an information packet. “yes this man uses water imagery” it’s a collage of post war anxieties in the brightest colors possible. there’s a wave in there. Sure.

A Dark Night’s Flashing: From The Red Darkness was my favorite piece though. it was a singular, seemingly normal scene (BY COMPARISON) almost a lot of surreal collages, but the contrast and split in the colors was really good at drilling in this. unsettling atmosphere.

the museum placed this immediately next to Miyajima Tatsuo’s red digital counter piece which was a fun way to like. keep that energy going lol. anyway really good to see in person and mesmerizing.

and that’s it! overall really solid museum

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ok the last museum post of the trip is something that’s more an art entertainment exhibit, team labs borderless. this was incredibly cool but not technically an art museum, but it’s been a nice exercise to write down thoughts so here they are regardless:

so the set up of team labs is essentially a mix of large projected light artwork, dark mirror rooms with light illusions, and like a maze. essentially instead of telling you where anything is they go “idk find the rooms yourself” which makes for a fun discovery game of it. my group all split up and saw different rooms, and it was very fun trying to explain the rooms we saw and compare notes.

the absolute best part of this was finding a tea shop the very first thing lol. thought I was just ordering tea to carry around, but then the attendant guided me to a pitch black room where they poured a glass of tea & the light affects made flowers bloom from my glass, and the petals would spread across the room whenever I took a drink. incredibly cool and set the tone of surprise/discovery for the trip.

from my rough notes from inside the exhibit I was really laughing at this poor woman having to tell people not to walk into a mirror (lol), I liked any of the rooms that disoriented me via light or optical illusion, and I really liked the wave art. after that I think I just kept getting lost and surprised and stopped taking notes.

overall the exhibits themselves were also very immersive in a fun way- some exhibits would move across the museum (this did not help my sense of direction), the different rooms had different scents (most prominently rain/floral), touching the art would make it react. just a fun time lol

it is however selfie museum extreme, which was less funny to watch. imo the light rooms were best experienced by lingering a bit which is hard to do when ur in the way of someone’s instagram story. blah. Anyway the dark rooms made up for it imo but art museum selfies are my one old man yelling at clouds vice. just experience the moment a little. I’m more fine with it if people don’t just take a photo and leave lol.

so overall: cool experience, really liked the presentation and maze of it all, didn’t like the selfie museum aspect but what can you do lol.