Installation 1993
by Seiichi Watanabe
100 Bouquets, 100 Candle light, 100
Writings
Memorial service were given simulated to real life's events,
but this time for the discarded object..
Installation view at Art Tower Mito roof yard
Upon exiting the ATM Workshop, return to
Room #6 of the
Contemporary Art Gallery, where you must
pass under the
"Bandage Gate." This leads you
to the works of Hiroshi Kariya,
a production artist residing in New York
since 1977.
The current exhibition shows his
"Installation 1993," intended
as a record of world events in 1993. For
the work, Kariya has
used material from the reports of everyday
news, including
newspapers and magazines. He has labeled
such a format as
"reportage pictures" and
"reportage sculpture." These works
treat the lives of human beings as their
main theme, as well
as the record of the traces those leave.
Colupsed girl and Vulture waited
Colupsed girl; made of bread from 5 different country (style).
They hunged from the ceiling with fishing thread.
Vulture; made of plaster wrapped with trash bag, facing girl.
They situated on the chalkboard of each entitled:
Food, Killing, food, killing, connected each other.
Kariya calls his works "sutras."
Indeed, ever since 1997, he
has repeatedly attached the words "is
the now" to materials
he collects every day, just as if he were
copying sutras in the
fashion of Buddhist monks. These include a
broad variety of
items such as wood floating on the Hudson
River, waste
material from construction sites, and
stones that Kariya has
been picking up piece by piece each day.
18 drawings video 
go to d rawing
100 wraps
Various daily object wraped with canvas cloth, or linen.
In his "Wall of the World (Bosnia Ripped
Apart)" installation,
Kariya has hung a great many blackboards
along the wall.
The boards are made of masonite, a common
construction
material. Having written the words
"is the now" a countless
number of times on the boards, Kariya has
termed this work
his "blackboard sutra." The
printed words pasted onto the
boards are headlines from newspaper
stories, and the articles
themselves are pasted ontothe back. Each
board has been
cut to match the size of each article,
resulting in different sizes.
The articles are arranged in chronological
order from left to
right along the wall, beginning in January
1993 and ending in
December 1993. Here and there, several
blackboards are
missing, leaving cloth hanging in their
place. These are the
stories about Bosnia, and have been moved
to the
brown-colored "Wall of Bosnia"
that lies further back.
Torn Bosnia (Wall of absence)
This wall work has a relationship with Mizuma Art Gallery installation; Wall of absence .
The hanging of boards on a wall is
reminiscent of the Japanese
custom of hanging "ema" votive
placards at shrines, and
represent wishes or prayers.
Lying along the floor is Kariya's work,
"That Which Wraps One
Hundred Bodies." As the title
indicates, there are one hundred
bodies, alluding to corpses. A blackboard
has been attached to
each of the bodies, and an obituary has
been pasted on each
board. A requiem sutra has also been
written upon each of the
boards.
In Kariya's "Stretcher," a
photograph has been attached of a
nurse in Sarajevo carrying a bloodstained
stretcher. In his
"Girl and Vulture," Kariya has
brought together a photograph
of a vulture waiting for the death of a
girl on the verge of
starvation, along with a blackboard with
stories about famine, etc.
Kariya's "Red Cross Wall" and
"United Nations Wall" works are
made from materials thrown away from the
Hidetoshi
NAGASAWA Exhibition held recently. Looking
through the hole
cut through the first work, one can read
the words,
Red cross Wall (left), UN Wall
Re-assemble of the discarded wall materials
from previous installation Hidetoshi Nagasawa's devided wall materials.
Work is related to Kariya's 1990 ICA Philadelphia Installation: Memory / Ilya Kabakov's Wall
"STOP THE BLOODY MURDER." The
hole in the second work,
then, appears to be a hole punched into a
silhouette of the
Pacific Ocean. His "Desert Wall"
comprises blackboards with
photographs of flabbergasted people
staring at a flood of the
Mississippi River, and a flood in India.
Turkish Wall
In his "Turkish Wall," Kariya
has highlighted an article about five
Turkish people burned to death. Inscribed
on the wall is the
word "Hass," which means
"hate" in German.
Protest Wall
The "Protest Wall" contains news
photographs of a broad
spectrum of protests: an anti-abortion
march in Washington,
D.C.; Bucharest residents opposed to the
economic policies
of their government, and demanding funds
for AIDS research;
citizens calling for an investigation into
the Sagawa Express
scandal in Japan; Buddhists in Cambodia
praying for peace;
Americans clamoring to save Bosnia; people
anxious about
their future.
Walking into Room #7 of the Gallery, we
see another of Kariya's
works, "Classroom with a Maze."
Near the front of the room is a
surveying instrument with a telescope. The
desks and chairs
have been arranged in a way to prevent
easy passage as a
maze, so to speak. On the blackboards have
been pasted
photograph files, clippings from such
magazines as "Time,"
"Life," and "National
Geographic," and from such newspapers
as the New York Times and the Asahi
Shimbun. In addition,
Kariya has pasted material from books
about society, science,
and religion, as well as world maps. The
desks and chairs
used by Kariya for this work were borrowed
from Mito City,
and had originally come from a school that
was closed down.
Classroom with a Maze
At the end, please take a look through the
surveying telescope.
You should be able to read something.
(on Installation at Art Tower Mito)
By Seiichi Watanabe
Translated by Paul T. Narum
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