Although doomed to miss
But it's still worth looking forward to
Where did you go on your last trip before the pandemic?
Many people's answer is the 2019 Setouchi International Art Festival.
Recently, this triennial event has once again kicked off.
The Seto Inland Sea is located between Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu in Japan. There are many islands in the sea, and only a limited number of small boats travel to and from them every day. Low-key and quiet, indisputable.
Since 2010, with the holding of art festivals, it has gradually become the most literary utopia in Japan. More than 1 million visitors visit each event.
Yayoi Kusama's polka dot pumpkin, Tadao Ando's Jichu Art Museum and Benesse House, Toshima Art Museum... Attract art lovers from all over the world to come to the pilgrimage, sure to brush your circle of friends.
This year, the festival has come to its fifth edition, and not only can we see the new works of Tadao Ando and Hiroshi Sugimoto, but also 71 groups of domestic and foreign artists participating in the exhibition to complete this literary and artistic feast.
01
Grandparents' smiles
Welcome back to the Seto Inland Sea
The main vision of each art festival is written by Kenya Hara, and this year is no exception.
Kenya Hara is known as the "Godfather of Japanese Graphic Design" and is the Chief Design Director of MUJI. He has also been responsible for the visual design of big names such as Daikan Yamashiya Bookstore, Isetan, and Ajinomoto, and is well versed in the essence of Japanese aesthetics.
This time, Kenya Hara and Yoshihiko Ueda, a Japanese court photographer, created three posters featuring three aboriginal grandparents on the island as models to showcase their daily lives and bring local residents closer to tourists.
Hara said that every time he visits these islands, he is deeply impressed by the kindness and enthusiasm of the old people, hoping to recreate their smiles.
So he asked his grandparents to put on colorful sunglasses and freeze these warm moments against the backdrop of the natural scenery of the Seto Inland Sea.
The smiles of the old people are very infectious, as if welcoming everyone to the island and rushing to the agreement to meet again after 3 years of separation.
"The good thing about Naoshima is that there are a lot of old people." Japan is a big country with an aging population, and Hara hopes that through these energetic grandparents, the world can see the dazzling energy of the elderly and convey a message of happiness to tourists.
This is the first time that the festival has used "people" as the visual subject, and the past few sessions have revolved around the island itself.
For example, in 2019, there are some mysterious and dark "creatures in the sea" series.
In contrast, this year's vision not only makes people feel brighter, but also more closely related to people.
This is in line with the theme of the art festival: to recreate the setouchi islands of the past when nature and humans shine together, and to make the Seto Inland Sea a "sea of hope" for all regions of the world.
02
Tadao Ando New Work
It is a perfect match with Yayoi Kusama
At this year's art festival, Tadao Ando's new museum, Valley Gallery, made a stunning appearance.
Many of the travelers who visit Setouchi initially came after the famous Japanese architect and Pritzker Prize winner.
Thirty years ago, he built The Benesse House, the first local museum in Naoshima, which combines art galleries and residences to make Naoshima a hit.
Among them, the Oval room type has only 6 rooms, which cannot be booked half a year in advance in the high season, and is known as one of the most difficult hotels in the world.
Today, 30 years later, he's back in the mountains, launching the Valley Gallery, the most conceptual architectural masterpiece to date, in the canyon near the House of Belesson.
The 96-square-meter pavilion is inspired by Japanese shrines and is shaped in a trapezoidal shape and covered with an angular steel roof.
The roof consists of several slightly raised triangles that exhibit the effect of origami folds.
A narrow opening at a 30-degree angle is revealed in the middle, introducing the outdoor sky, scenery, and seasonal changes into the interior.
This design also guarantees the entry of natural light. Sunlight shines through the sloping skylights, casting sharp shadows on the walls, like the outlines of a sundial.
The building continues the Master's signature clear-water concrete style, as clean, minimalist and natural as ever.
As Ando says, it's a space as pure as a white canvas. "Everything superfluous is erased, leaving only the colors cast by the light that changes with time and the seasons."
Inside the museum is Yayoi Kusama's work "The Garden of Narcissus". Countless mirror-shaped small steel balls are sprinkled on the ground, which is extremely suitable for the gray exhibition space, and is definitely the next hot punch card.
In fact, this work has been on Naojima since 2006, until this festival, with the completion of the Valley Gallery, it was relocated here and found a new home that suited it best.
The Valley Gallery is Tadao Ando's 9th building on Naoshima.
In addition to the previously mentioned Berakusei House, he also built the Jichu Art Museum, the Lee Yu Hwan Art Museum, the Ando Museum of Art... Almost single-handedly, Naoshima was built into the temple of art it is today.
These galleries house a large collection of works of art, many of which are masterpieces such as Monet's "Water Lilies", Li Yuhuan's natural rock and teppanyaki art, James Turrell's abstract art that combines space and light display, Walter De Maria's gold-plated wood carvings and black spheres, etc., are worth seeing.
One of Walter De Maria's installations: a space composed of gold-plated wood carvings and spheres with a diameter of 2.2 meters
03
Master photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto
Create a glass tea room on the water
In this new project, Hiroshi Sugimoto's "Cloister of Time" exhibition has also attracted much attention.
Hiroshi Sugimoto is a National Treasure photographer in Japan, who has won the Hasselblad Foundation International Photography Award for the "Nobel Prize in Photography", and has been praised by the British "Times" as one of the "greatest artists of the twentieth century", and 3 photos have been auctioned for more than 10 million.
Although his work has been exhibited in the House of Belesheng, at this year's festival, in addition to the original indoor display, the exhibition also expanded into lounges, conference rooms and outdoor spaces, bringing together photography, design and sculpture.
Hiroshi Sugimoto's glass tea room "Smelling Bird An", which was built in 2014, has also recently been officially opened to the public.
The tea room is located on the water surface and surrounded by glass on all sides, which is intended to allow people to experience the changes of the four seasons and the passage of time, observe nature, and reflect on themselves.
The café in the pavilion has also been completely renovated, using what Hiroshi Sugimoto calls "sacred trees" – Kandai sugi, Yakusugi and Tochigi.
These three ancient woods also record the grandeur of time and history, and also deepen tadao Ando's concept of "symbiosis of nature, architecture and art".
04
A decaying island
Reborn by art
If it weren't for the pandemic, Seto Inland Sea would have made many people's travel lists this year.
Compared to Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto, this is clearly a niche destination. But in 2019, it was named one of the 52 most worth visiting places of the year by The New York Times.
There is no doubt that the Seto Inland Sea was reborn as a result of art.
Since ancient times, it has been a stronghold of Japan's maritime traffic, where ships come and go, where cultures meet, and where fishing has flourished.
However, since the 1960s, the island's large-scale industrial development has caused serious environmental pollution, the population has gradually lost, and the island has lost its vitality.
When Tadao Ando first came to Naoshima in 1988, he was shocked by what he saw. At that time, the island fell into an unprecedented decay. The toxic gases discharged from the metal smelters withered the trees in large quantities.
Tadao Ando Benesse House Liquor Store
It was not until the launch of the Setouchi International Art Festival in 2010 that more and more literary enthusiasts set foot on this coast that the islands began to recover economically and revitalize themselves.
In 2019, the number of tourists exceeded one million, setting a record.
Many high-quality works of art have remained here forever and have gradually become part of the ecology of the Seto Inland Sea.
The most out-of-the-loop is Kusama Yayoi's large pumpkin. Located at Naoshima Pier, the installation stands out against the deep blue background of the sea.
Last summer, pumpkins were swept away by typhoons, causing quite a stir on the Internet. This year's art festival did not see its figure.
However, the list of interesting works on the 12 small islands in the Seto Inland Sea is endless. Although it is impossible to go to the scene to watch because of the epidemic, the Bund Jun still made a list of must-punch cards.
Hopefully, we won't miss the next festival.
Yayoi Kusama , Red Pumpkin ( Naoshima )
Kazuyo Sejima + Ritsue Nishizawa / SANNA "Naoshima Port Terminal" (Naoshima)
Hiroshi Sanchi, "The Naoshima Plan "The Water" (Naoshima)
Sosuke Fujimoto, Naoshima Exhibition Hall (Naoshima)
Christian Boltanski, Heart Sound Archive (Toshima)
Toshima Museum of Art (Toshima)
Takato Kimura, "The Parking Lot of the Seagull" (Ongijima)
Leandro Erlich, "Non-existent existence" (Ongijima)
Jaume Plensa, The Soul of Namgijima (Ogijima)
Kawashima and Dream Friends ,Dancing Solo in Seto (Ogijima)
Keisuke Yamaguchi, "Walking Ark" (Ogijima)
Choi Jeong-hwa, "The Gift of the Sun" (Xiaodou Island)
"Lost Street ~ Changing Road Space ~ (Xiaodou Island)
Inujima "Art House Project" S-Art House / "contact lens" (Inujima)
Kayoko Nakajima, "The Old Home of Time" (Takami Island)
Text, Editor/Strawberry
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