EXHIBITED:

Fiction@Love, Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei, August 21- October 31, 2004

ILLUSTRATED:

Fiction@Love, Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei, 2004, color illustrated, p. 199

East Asian Contemporary Art
Japanese Trend. Art. Japan. Animamix Aesthetics

When discussing traditional Japanese aesthetics, some elements come easily to mind, such as the perfectly tapered Fuji Mountain, the delicate materials and styles of the kimono, and the elegant arrangement of Japanese-styled rooms. It may sound like a cliché, however, the Yamato clan is most renowned for their paranoid perfectionism, as well as their obsession for refinement. Luckily (or perhaps unfortunately), these are still preserved in contemporary Japanese art.

Japanese has always been strongly protectors of culture. This may be traced back as early as the Edo Shogunate period, when a National Isolationist Policy was enforced for more than 200 years. As a result of the policy perhaps, Japanese art retained its purity. After the Vietnam War, young Japanese underwent a dramatic change in vision; in addition to dispelling from the dark clouds of war, they assumed a greater task of leading Japan towards becoming a Westernized and Internationalized nation. Capitalism and fashion slowly occupied young people's mind. A visit to Tokyo shows not only a crowded city, but the scale of the population and Japanese ambition of world dominance. Remarkably, in some areas of Tokyo, young Japanese express their persistence in electronic games, music and fashion. Since 1997, photographer Shoichi Aoki started a series of photos of young people in Harajuku, and published them in FRUiT Magazine. The grotesqueness certainly bedazzled the whole world; it is no longer the 'cuteness' (kawai) people want to convey. They, on the other hand, truthfully put 'Manga (comic books)' images into practice and fused personalized yet twisted aesthetics into their daily life. Such a wave of fashion successfully invaded Western culture, not to mention nearby Taiwan.

Manga became readily available after World War II. Even nowadays, comic books still assume 40% of the total published materials in Japan. Manga readers cover all ages of groups; and the topics range from love stories, sports, cuisine, sci-i, and horror to sexual aesthetics. It's not hard to see why manga is one of the best in commercial media and its influences on Japanese contemporary art. If the ultimate goal of art is to trigger viewer's "empathy", the core of manga hits that speciic objective, without a doubt. Rather than being opportunistic, artists use more accessible art forms and language as a lexible foundation, and create virtual life for the majority of people to fantasize about.

Moreover, as Victoria Lu, the executive producer of "3L4D-3rd Life 4th Dimension", once stated, 'The narrative scripts, full of surprises and diversity, transform the images into a visual language by making them strongly descriptive. In the digital environment of the 21st century, written description has become more diversiied, more interesting and packed with much more information. Through the use of visual language, the exchange of ideas becomes possible' -(quoted from 3L4D-3rd Life 4th Dimension, Metaphysical Art Gallery, Taipei, 2007, page 3). Indeed, Japanese contemporary art has an evolutionized way of communication; artworks under its category seem to comprise of an eccentric quality: the extrinsic supericiality, fantasy and childishness; it relects melancholy, or even nostalgia with no escape.

Ravenel Spring Auction 2008 resembles a collection of Japanese contemporary artworks. In addition to established aesthetic experiences, Taiwanese viewers may also interpret how this geographically neighbour audaciously brought subculture into so-called "contemporary art" and gained recognition worldwide. Their culture is communicated not through education, but the combination of the arts with entertainment elements in all aspects.

Yayoi Kusama was born in 1929 and her status in the international art industry is not to be neglected. Her artworks candidly depict her own history and inescapable nightmares in details. In the forms of paintings, sculptures and action art, Kusama peers into surreal "psychology" and expresses the universe of her mind. Her highly contrastive color schemes returns traces of visual art, music and fashion during the psychedelic period. Her signiicance is perhaps attributable to her "icon" status, and her explicit yet soulful manifestation. "Swallow's Nest" illustrates a nest full of Kusama's signature round dots; it vaguely reiterates her lingering hallucinations, and the soft tones elicits her subconscious anxiety.

Hiroyuki Matsuura began as a graphic designer. In 1999, he began to create 'characters' with Manga traits, and drew acrylic paintings with animamix elements. For artists, many youngsters confuse the real world with Manga's virtual world. As a result, they fail at interactions or expressing emotions; some even think comic books are only for children. Matsuura's artworks challenge this bias and attempts to unleash our subliminal potential and consciousness. With a crisp color schemes and precise color clusters in "Ophelia" and "Maintenance", the floating figures like frozen movie frame shots try to lead viewers into uninhibited imagination.

Being the heir to Ukiyoe print, Ai Yamaguchi fuses illusions evident in a teenage girl's comic books into her delicate female figures with amazing purity. Magnificent acrylic colors recreate the scenes and ambience reflected in the Edo period. The lowers, birds and scenery all depict a recollection of the exquisite and sophisticated era; she is rightly considered a modern-day Ukiyoe print practitioner. Yamaguchi masterfully infuses pop styles into traditional Japanese aesthetics; through her bulbous eyed comical figures, she represents her multifaceted virtual world in the paintings. She is one of the best newcomers in "superlat art" of the Japanese post-modern school. With a kimono and the girl's cartoon face, her auctioned artwork "Yoiyoi" ingeniously combined classic Japanese style with modern fashion.

Rieko Sakurai is skilled enough to freely alternate between craftsmanship and creativity. Her works amiably illustrate girls and animals, which seem to be the only two elements, to accomplish a wonderland. The girl's silky skin, innocent dress and her abstruse eyes dazzle the viewer and prompts one to wonder, "What are those bright colors trying to cover up"? As for the bird in "Bird Girl", perhaps this bird's origin is really just the Paradise within the little girl's mind.

Lintalo Torii is an alternative artist in mythological painting style. With seemingly "uncontaminated" background, he lays out dramatic themes; whether abstracted from particular stories or not, they seem to embellish a ambience of "classics". One is carried away by simple elements that brilliantly dance upon the canvas. Half sketches with soothing colors solidly strike core of Torii's artworks. The ininite extension of the body and life is reminiscent of a millennium-old myth that never fails to touch our hearts. His artworks "Nativity" and "Water Fall" splendidly transpire eternal aesthetic energy.