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Date
: 11/25/98 5:30 PM Received: 11/28/98 3:37 PM From: Philippe Vergne, philippe.vergne@walkerart.org To: louis.mazza, louis.mazza@walkerart.org Wednesday, November 25th Spent morning on the phone trying to get in touch with the artists I want to meet. We share the duty with the Japan Foundation. They call the institutions, I call the artists. Very often they are not home and the roommate or the family does not speak any English. It often ends up in very funny "death conversation". Maybe I have already said it, I am getting old or senile.
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Anyway I left the IH to meet with Mr. Toshio Hara from the Hara Museum. It is a private museum which belongs to Toshio Hara and is located close to the Hotel La Forêt. It was pretty easy to find. I mean the taxi driver was good. Toshio Hara and his associate director Yoko Uchida were very nice and welcoming. It was my first institutional meeting I think. I was a little bit nervous. We spoke about the Walker. I gave them catalogues and they were very surprised by the number of young artists we are working with. I was proud (yes). I understood very early in the conversation that they do not host touring exhibitions, so I was little sad, but not too much because the spaces are not so big. We exchanged information. Toshio Hara told me about his experience in Minneapolis with Martin Friedman and about the great party the Walker organized for him. I told him that if he comes back to visit we'll do the same, maybe even better.
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We spoke, we played one of curators' favorite games: the game of the names. Who, and why. You know the "top 10" of the young artists. Then Sophie Calle came running into the office . We hugged each other. Haven't seen each for a long time. And brutally the meeting became family. I left to visit the exhibition. A photo exhibition from the collection of a Swiss or German Bank. I'll check my documentation. Good, little bit usual suspects, but good. |
I enjoyed
the Jean Pierre Raynaud room which looks like a bathroom
They forced me. I have no special taste for those games. Believe me. Not in a museum. In between, as you can see I did some nice experimentation in the stairs. I want to be Gunter Forg. And have coffee with my friend Emmanuelle who follows every French artist in Tokyo. I took 2 pictures because we haven't seen each other for a long time and I thought you might enjoy seeing a charming French woman on the web.
I left. Had lunch in a little place close to the station. Stopped by a shrine . I really like in Tokyo the way those religious place are integrated alongside modern, postmodern architecture. It might be naive again. Do I get moved by a church in Paris? No, so be quiet now. On my way back I decided to stop and visit Ota Fine Art Gallery. The gallery is located at the subway station Ebisu. And you can see some examples of Japanese postmodern architecture. I do not really like it but I am fascinated by the disjunctions these buildings create in the urban space. It's total chaos. Yes, this is Hidenori Ota that you can see running through the gallery. He has a nice show with 70s works by Nauman, Acconci, Oppenheim, Matta-Clark and a very nice little sculpture by Smithson. We joke, he told me about BuBu de la Madeleine, an artist living in Kyoto that I should visit. As a matter of fact at the minute I am writing these lines, I am just outside her studio, in the train, on my way back from Kyoto to Tokyo. Time/Space distortion, digital technology. My god it sounds like a Wim Wenders movie. But since I am behind (very) in my writing you might hear about Kyoto on my way back from Hiroshima. Speaking about digital technology, my next meeting was with Mariko Mori, in her place. Philippe was a little nervous. She is living in a nice little apartment on the top of a building with an incredible view on the city. The interior design is beautiful and in a way looks like her work. No photos. Philippe was too shy. And also because this place is a shelter for the artist and it would be a little indiscreet and vulgar to shoot it. Anyway, the meeting was good. I was very impressed by her. First, good Japanese tea and then a very interesting conversation about her work. She showed me her drawing book for her next project commissioned by Prada. The drawings are very strange. Between Kusama and Odilon Redon. We spoke about her relationship to tradition and modernity and finally discussed Egyptian antiquity. She is very articulate. After that the conversation was more relaxed. She showed me books about Japanese temples and offered advise about hot springs and clubs in Tokyo. "Bleu" or "Blue" seems to be the place to go. Was mentioned 3 times by 3 different people. We plan to go sometime before I leave as well as to a Noh performance. She also invited me to a tea ceremony that she will perform next Sunday. Also invited are Sophie Calle, Emmanuelle and Atsuko Koyanagi. My next meeting calls me. I was late. I ran to
meet with Miki Okabe
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at the Japan Foundation in order to work on my schedule that I keep
changing every other day. I feel a little bad to torture her this
way. We spent sometime fixing my schedule
and then we went to have a wonderful dinner with her husband 
who is a contemporary music critic, historian and teacher. They
took me to a place for Japanese "nouvelle cuisine." It was very
delicious. In a little booth, just the 3 of us and wine from Alsace
which matches perfectly Japanese food . They were
laughing, I shot them. I love the way the food was