18 | Tuesday, December 4, 2018 LIFE CHINA DAILY HONG KONG EDITION Modern art goes hightech A Tokyo art group is drawing huge crowds with immersive shows, Deng Zhangyu reports.
ince opening in June, Tokyo based art collective team Lab’s immersive shows — Borderless at Tokyo’s Mori Sbuilding and TeamLab Planets at a temporarilybuilt art space just a 10minute drive from the Mori building — have attracted about 1.7 million visitors from across the world. Every day, visitors wait in long lines for admission to experience an immersive world that has been created by an art group comprising engineers, architects, mathemati cians, programmers and computer graphic specialists. As for the shows’ popularity, they are soon expected to receive more visitors than the Museum of Modern Art in New York within the first five months of opening, says Toshiyuki Ino ko, founder of team Lab. “It took 18 years Toshiyuki for us to be recog Inoko, nized by people,” founder of says Inoko, who set teamLab up teamLab in 2001 while he was com pleting his graduate studies in information physics at the Univer Clockwise from top: Some sity of Tokyo. His group comprised works from Tokyobased art just a few members then, but has collective teamLab’s immersive now grown to about 500. shows Borderless and TeamLab In the past few years, teamLab Planets: Universe of Water has led the world of digital art by Particles on a Rock where offering interactive experience and People Gather; Expanding Three immersive shows by mixing art and Dimensional Existence in technology. And they have also Transforming SpaceFree received numerous invitations Floating, Flattening 3 Colors and from museums, art centers and gal Blurred 9 Colors; and Memory of leries around the world. Topography. The term “digital art” is used by PHOTOS PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY Inoko to describe teamLab’s work, because it is different from paint ing, sculpture, installations and even multimedia art. Speaking about how he came up with the term, Inoko, 41, says: “I googled digital art online and found that nobody used it to name produce 60 digital works. And between man and nature, and cent of them are Chinese. Shenzhen last year attracted more In fact, teamLab’s digital works their art. So I decided to use it.” among the exhibits is a waterfall encourage people to explore their Xiao Ge, a Chinese artist who than 400,000 visitors in about four are often criticized for being classi But he adds that if anyone offers several meters high that cascades body and the world.” flew to see the two shows with her months. fied as fine art. But, in 2016, their him a better term he would gladly down the wall onto the floor and Also, he says currently people curator husband in November, says Inoko says a plan to hold a show digital work Universe of Water Par accept it. disappears around the visitors’ feet live lives removed from nature, that teamLab’s show is like an art at a Shanghai museum is under dis ticles was sold at a Philips auction Most of teamLab’s works, now on when they obstruct the flow of which gives them a mistaken view Disneyland for adults. cussion. And their latest show in in Hong Kong for $240,149, the first display at the Mori Building Digital water. that humans can live separately “I was excited for almost five China — to be held on Saturday — time a digital work had gone under Art Museum — an exhibition space Also, flowers bloom and scatter from nature. And this is his focus in hours when experiencing the will feature three of their works at a the hammer. And this year, their dedicated to teamLab’s works — into pieces in a circle of birth and teamLab’s works. immersive shows, even though I fashion and art event in Shanghai works were also sold at Christie’s. aim to erase the line between peo death on walls and floors while TeamLab’s works always use ele hardly had any sleep the day by Hong Kong actor Edison Chen. As for how he sees technology in ple and nature, art and viewers, viewers touch them either with ments from nature, such as water, before. Separately, Inoko says his works art, Inoko says: “Technology is a and humans and technology by their hands or feet. And virtual light, animals and plants to create a “And although it’s different from have more Chinese collectors tool to free our art from material. using lights, sounds, projections birds, fish and other animals move world that allow visitors to be part traditional visual art, I think it because the Chinese art market is So, we never use technology for the and motion sensors. from one room to another. of nature instead of focusing only expands the concept of art.” now strong and open. sake of it. We only use it to help cre At the digital art museum, which Speaking about his works, Inoko on themselves. TeamLab is very popular in Chi In Japan, museums are less likely ate new works.” is bigger than a football field, in the says: “I wanted to explore and Nearly half of the 1.7 million visi na, too, with their shows held in to display his work due to budget Odaiba area of Tokyo, 470 projec extend the notion of beauty. I’m tors who have seen the shows so far Beijing, Shenzhen last year and ary constraints and a conservative Contact the writer at tors and 520 computers are used to interested in the relationship are foreigners, and about 10 per Wuhan this year. The show in attitude toward art, he says. [email protected]
could easily miss the two flying in the region, thus the architecture swallows whose size is relatively and the views were drab, and it was Famous Jiangnan small compared with the paintings’ difficult to distinguish the land and other subjects. the sky, both awash with gray. The color palette of the two pic “In much disbelief, Wu began landscapes to go under tures is light. Wu smeared the river traveling frequently to Jiangnan and the sky with a subtle degree of from the 1960s onward,” Wang says. gray and, at the center of the paint “He sketched and experimented. He the hammer in Beijing ings, he outlined several conjunctive wanted to find an approach to white walls, a distinctive feature of depict the poetry and elegance the Jiangnan architecture. He only unique to Jiangnan that could be By LIN QI as part of a sale by Poly Internation dabbed some green, red and yellow presented in both Chinese and [email protected] al Auction. Both titled Twin Swal on a tree standing by the river, Western forms.” lows, the paintings are of the same bringing about the only vibrant Wu finally found it after a two In many people’s minds, there size and present the same composi aspect to an overall sad or serene decade effort. exist two ways to discover pictur tion, but in different mediums: one effect that engulfs the two paintings. “He succeeded in choosing a gray esque Jiangnan, on the southern is a classic Chinese ink piece com According to Wang Luxiang, a ish silver as the dominant tone of his bank of Yangtze River. One is to view pleted in 1988 and the other is oil on researcher at China National Acade palette. He was inspired after his the landscape in real life and the oth canvas, and was completed six years my of Painting in Beijing, Wu began long gazes at local houses. er is to view the paintings of the late later. exploring the Jiangnan motif after “He also found in the structure of modern master Wu Guanzhong. The two works, both 70 by 140 he attended classes given by art pro these buildings the cleancut combi Wu, a native of Yixing, Jiangsu centimeters, depict the same serene fessors of the former Soviet Union in nation of dots and lines. His paint province, in the heart Jiangnan, rec scene, in which a couple of swallows Beijing, in the early 1950s. Wu, a ings show a brilliant combination of reated the natural beauty of the fly over a stretch of riverside and graduate of oil painting at the pres a lot of lines, large areas of white region he had been familiar with houses built in a typical Jiangnan tigious National High School of Fine space and dots, with reduced since childhood in such a way that it architectural style. Arts in Paris, then taught at the Cen details,” Wang says. evokes a poetic resonance in a view The composition looks as simple tral Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. The greatness of Wu’s Jiangnan er, rendering his works with a clas as one can find in many landscapes Wang says Wu had heard the Sovi landscapes is that he was able to bal sic charm. of Wu’s oeuvre. It is divided into Wu Guanzhong’s two paintings, both titled Twin Swallows, will be etera lecturers say that Jiangnan ance sense and sensibility by juxta Two paintings from Wu’s Jian three parts, the reflective water, the auctioned in Beijing on Thursday by Poly International Auction. was not a suitable subject for oil posing the energy of nature and the gnan landscape series will go under rectangular residential buildings The oil on canvas (top) was completed in 1994, and a classic painting, because, unlike Europe, it power of manmade structures and the hammer in Beijing on Thursday and the gloomy sky — in which one Chinese ink piece (above) in 1988. PHOTOS PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY rained heavily throughout the year forms, he adds.