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<\/p>\nA night in spring, filled with the odor of life<\/b><\/p>\n
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What caught my eyes first upon entering the exhibition space was a cubic frame more than two meters large, with four-colored belts on its sides. The belts consisted of warp yarn put up in a perfectly straight fashion, and could easily be mistaken for rays of light. Pulled from about 800 reels that were methodically lined up along the walls of the elliptically shaped space, the threads were individually dyed in subtly varying colors, to create a beautiful gradation effect.
\nTaking a look around the venue, I noticed flowers arranged on a total of four white exhibition stands. Camellia, convolvulus, spiderwort and chrysanthemum ? one representing each season ? were displayed alongside bottles of Shiseido cosmetics, whereas their shadows created stark contrasts on the white surfaces.<\/p>\n
For the \u201cShiki no iro\u201d exhibition themed on the beauty of the four seasons in Japan, The Ginza Space invited two (groups of) artists whose work has been revolving around on plants. Fukumi Shimura, a vegetable dyeing artist and living national treasure, and her daughter Yoko, a dyeing artist like her mother, together created \u201cHikari no chashitsu\u201d(\u201ctea room of light\u201d) out of threads dyed using madder, indigo and seasonal wild grass among others, and exhibited the work in the form of an installation that made full use of the venue\u2019s open ceiling. Yoshihiro Suda, who is known for elaborately sculpting objects in the shapes of plants, contributed four wooden sculptures based around the colors white, blue and green, presented in an ikebana style to add a sense of tension.
\nThis was not the first time that Suda worked with the Shimuras. In the \u201clifescape\u201d exhibition at Shiseido Gallery in 2014, which was curated by Suda, they showed \u201cKei,\u201d an installation based on threads that served as a prototype of sorts for the work they unveiled this time. Perfectly embodying her idea that \u201cthe colors of threads are the most beautiful before they are woven into cloths,\u201d the original installation is one of Fukumi Shimura\u2019s most well-known works. It later traveled to venues such as the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, and the Setagaya Art Museum, where it was shown using different colors as part of Shimura\u2019s retrospective exhibition \u201cBoro e no kaiki.\u201d Six years after making \u201cKei,\u201d the three artists had gotten together once again at Ginza, Tokyo.<\/p>\n
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In the tranquil environment shared by works that take their colors and shapes from nature, Megumi Nakamura did a one-off dance performance when spring was around the corner in late February.
\nDressed all in black, Nakamura slowly approached, and ultimately stood face to face with the Shimura\u2019s\u2019 work. With restrained movements and often downcast eyes, the performance was charged with a strong attractive force to take the audience in. Threads, and fingers moving as if tieing them together ? the airiness in these elements is exactly what the term yugen<\/em> (mysterious and profound) refers to.
\nHaving worked with such renowned European dance companies as the Nederlands Dans Theater, since her return to Japan in 2007, Nakamura has been putting effort into her creative and educational endeavors, as well as genre-crossing collaborations. Her performance combines a dignified kind of charm, quiet passion, and an amount of strength that seems to be increasing with age. Dancing to monophonic music, from unaccompanied singing reminiscent of Gregorian chant, to instrumental music, here she delivered a piece into which she didn\u2019t cram too much, but left some spaces unfilled instead. The resonance she created that way suggested that her art has indeed attained perfection.
\nI was especially impressed by the movements of her arms that, every now and then, stretched out horizontally in an almost piercing manner. The gestures resembling very much those of threading weft yarn, reminded me of Fukumi Shimura\u2019s statement likening warp threads to space, tradition and contemplation, and weft threads to time, the present and emotion. *1<\/sup><\/a> The three-dimensional works of Fukumi and Yoko Shimura and Yoshihiro Suda, with their fleeting colors and shapes, constantly in transition and ready to cross over to the other side any second, instantly shone brighter once they mingled with the temporal art form of dance. Just like flower buds that open, they began to spill over with the natural life they had been harboring inside.<\/p>\n