September 29, 2005
"EVE’s Pore" Koichi WATANABE
Pop Meets Cyborg
[Blogged by Yukihiko YOSHIDA] Koichi WATANABE, known for his unique work molding famous people's body in plaster, collaborated with dancer, Rumiko BESSHO. BESSHO’s statue as full-body-model and video art were placed in the gallery’s white space. In the video, she is completely naked. Her body seems to have an aura of a real body in spite of the image's virtuality. BESSHO appears from backwards and move slowly and dance sharply with piano sound. At the beginning, she was in the same posture as a plaster statue. The statue looks like a mold of her body.
Then she began to move little by little looking carefully her inner side. In the video art, BESSHO was naked. Her images were projected on white costume and it looked erotic. However, white statue’s existence looks real on the other side. As BESSHO turns slowly and slowly, white cloth was involved to her body little by little. Her movement is not dramatic but sharp and free. From Kazuo
OHNO to Akaji MARO, WATANABE makes famous persons’ plaster models widely. On this exhibition, WATANABE also displayed statue by plaster which took the model of “Rika-chan doll” and "Kyupi doll." It looks like pop and a bit Akiba-style. Takashi MURAKAMI’s concept, "super flat" was shocking to Art World and Japanese figure dolls got more and more popular. These dolls are more OTAKU than Rika-chan and Kewpi doll, which is also popular in Japan.
They are pop, but they are artificial like cyborgs which you can see in SAC 2nd GIGS. BESSHO’s statue is more humanistic than these figures and cyborgs. From the point of view of performance, it looks successful and I am looking forward to seeing her next step. BESSHO’s 3 types of body, statue by full-body-model by plaster, full-naked body image in the video art, and BESSHO as a real dancer, represent artificial Japanese-ness and existence in the 21st century.
Related Webpages:
Rika-chan: http://www.takaratoys.co.jp/licca_chan/
Takashi Murakami: http://www.kaikaikiki.co.jp/
SAC 2nd GIGS: http://www.kokaku-s.com/root.html
Posted by jo at September 29, 2005 07:18 AM
