Sometimes I am tempted to focus on the "scenery" as I watch a live telecast of New Year Hakone Ekiden (The Tokyo-Hakone Round-Trip College Relay Marathon Race). Looking at the cityscape through which the athletes are running, I see the scenery and think, "I know this town," or "That shop is located in this street," or "What a beautiful view this is!" At that time, I see the passing scenery, not the running athlete.
     What is "to see scenery" in this condition? Does my arbitrary look-around from a marathon telecast also count as “seeing scenery"? An exhibition under the theme of seeing scenery was held outside Tokyo. This was "Lu Lu Lu Landscape - How I see the world around me -" (from November 3rd 2008 to December 21st 2008) at Shizuoka Prefectural Museum of Art.

    This exhibition introduced paintings, photographs, movies, animations and three-dimensional art by eight artists: Satoshi Uchiumi, Mana Konishi, Kanako Sasaki, Risaku Suzuki, Saeko Takagi, Yuken Teruya, Brian Alfred, Akira Yanagisawa. "The scenery" in the exhibited artworks was introduced by the museum as "fragmentary, somewhat light, loose or modest, variable and fluctuating".^*1 Let us briefly consider the exhibits to understand the meaning.
     There is fluctuating scenery in the paintings by Saeko Takagi [fig. 1] in which vivid colors and the textures of enamel and crystal form a unique image in her mind. Such fluctuation is also found in the works by Akira Yanagisawa [fig. 2], featuring the inorganic lines of a computer which erode the exhibition space.

     "Between the Sea and the Mountain-KUMANO" (2005-2008) [fig. 3] by Risaku Suzuki photographed in the Kumano mountain area, consists of an assemblage of fragmentary shots that have lost focus.
     A painting series by Satoshi Uchiumi shows and is entitled "The unrestricted field of view" [fig. 4] in front of us, and this is scenery in which a different exhibition style is possible and each painting is independent of the others. With these artworks by Suzuki and Uchiumi, from the fragmentary variable scenery, new scenery can be formed in the mind of each viewer.
     Yuken Teruya cuts a tree out of a familiar fast food paper bag or "creates" past creationism as a dessert [fig. 5], Briand Alfred flatly takes various kinds of scenery including the United Nations building or views of the Hurricane Katrina disaster which convey a social political viewpoint [fig. 6]. In these artworks, we can find the artists’ will to avoid discussion of social or political issues and convert them to ordinary daily scenes.
     Personal stories are hidden in the overwhelming scenery formed by the photographs and movies of Kanako Sasaki [fig. 7]. The existence and action of a character based on the actual scenery is swallowed by less ordinary scenery in paintings by Mana Konishi [fig. 8], in which the extraordinary-scale scenery still has a sense of lightness. The history and climate of the land have been erased and other scenery is seen in the canvas.

     What is common to these artworks is the distance between the viewer and the scenery, no matter whether the name or target of the piece is identifiable or not. I do not know how much of their personal emotional feeling the artists put into these works, but I cannot feel such enthusiasm from any of the artworks and it is hard to identify the location even if the name has been specified. Can we feel externalization or objectivization from these views as if we happen to watch the passing scenery at a marathon telecast?

     This exhibition might be an assemblage of small scenic views. However, it shows us the outer scenery which gets clearer according to the distance between us and the scenery. These are fragmentary, fluctuating, elusive views, like passing scenery at a marathon telecast. In seeing them, we might recreate the scenery at will. In passing daily life, by watching and living in the momentarily-stopped scenery, the scenery of outside us is completed.
(Translated by Chisato Kushida)

*1

Shoko Kawatani “Lu Lu Lu Landscape : How I see the world around me” Seeking for a community beyond distance and geography, “Lu Lu Lu Landscape : How I see the world around me” catalog

*2

Shizuoka Prefectural Museum of Art, Shizuoka, Japan , December 5,2008, p. 39

"Lu Lu Lu Landscape - How I see the world around me -"
03/Nov/2009 - 21/Dec/2009
Venue: Shizuoka Prefectural Museum of Art