Following Water - Experiencing the Circulation of Life
Shigeko Hirakawa's work for the Maison des Arts in Malakoff - an
imposing family mansion with garden - must be seen as a play in several
acts. It's a play staged both indoors and out, through which the
visiter walks and over the course of which he is led from the bowels of
the earth towards the heavens. This dramatic art, which makes full use
of the premises, in no way eclipses the dimension of each individual
sculpture. The work withstands any theatrical effects; each act is
guarded against too much staging. Indeed, the work must be skillfully
conceived in order to retain the visiter's regard as well as to fit the
visiter's body - itself composed primarily of water - into its scheme,
into its remarkable circulation.
In the garden, Domesticated Water presents giant 'lenses' of water
tinted a flourescent yellowish-green around the edges and darker green
in the center. This water is "tamed, separated from nature, enclosed
and unmoving", enveloped in soft transparent plastic and dyed with
fluorescein, a substance used for tracking the flow of underground
water. It is this coloured water which provides the Ariandne's clue
allowing the visiter to track the flow of the work's design, to clearly
locate and distinguish; we are surely in the realm of an experiment, an
experimentation. The artificial color also gives the water an aspect
which is, paradoxically, even more abstract and more universal. The
garden is structured vertically in its length, it's boundaries defined
at one end by the house, at the other by a fountain made of columns and
along the sides by a row of trees. Thus, the sculptures present first
of all a discrepancy through their horizontality; they deviate from the
standard mode of erection. They take on the dimensions of the garden by
improbable dimensions. A further contrast is created by the colours
which immediately ensure the work won't disappear into its environment,
as well as rule out any possibility of an ecological interpretation.
Once again, Shigeko Hirakawa is wary of any naturalistic effect. She
knows that a garden is a cultivated site, in contrast to a natural one;
it's a domesticated space like the water she presents us, like that of
the fountain. How can we not see these lenses of water as eyes, pupils
and irises? It is above all the regard which cultivates and
domesticates, that of the artist which gives something to see, that of
the visiter which connects and intensifies. Like a garden, a regard is
a mental matter, and like a garden it invites walking. Lenses or
pupils, like a regard, both reflect the exterior world and provide an
opening onto the interior world: the circles of water are bottomless
wells linking the earth and the sky.
Like Alice, let us enter! On the ground floor of the house, we are
invited to stroll through an installation entitled Underground Water.
We are plunged in darkness, guided only by glowing effervescent halos
cast on the ceiling by light which passes through containers of
fluorescent green bubbling water. The set up could be compared to a
scientific experiment in a laboratory, or the discovery of an
alchemist's secret workshop. In spite of everything, we are driven
toward the light by a feeling of impending danger mixed with the
anticipation of imminent release. This must be the feeling divers
experience when they ascend from the lightless underwater depths to
catch sight at last of the sun's light filtering through several meters
of water.
On the first floor, we continue our upward journey - upstream if you
will - to arrive in Sky-Water, where numerous columns of blue fabric
form the pillars of a thoroughly reexamined architecture. In ancient
Japan, the word "ame" was used to indicate both "rain" and "sky". Here,
the unreal or even fantastic aspect of the work is emphasized by the
use of space and the choice of materials. What we find is neither a
reconstruction nor an evocation - even less of a simulation - but
rather the proposal and construction of a poetic work, one that is
capable of generating sense through a careful and sparing use of the
available space and the materials used, while in no way being imposed
upon by them. In her relationship to the world, Shigeko Hirakawa is
truly a sculptor at heart, even when presenting us with what for
simplicity's sake we classify as an installation. Like all sculptors,
drawing holds an important place for her.
Water Circulation could be an inclusive title, one which best sums up
the overall project. Water that is once again tinted with fluorescein
(we recognize the same artificial green hues from the garden, the
shades of which change depending on the background colour) flows in
constant motion through an enclosed circuit. Circulation of water,
circulation of the body, circulation of the regard, circulation of
life. Without the riggings of special effects or simulations, and far
removed from any virtually suggested space, Shigeko Hirakawa enables us
to experience these different circulations which intersect our
conceptions in the traffic of images and sensations. Once again, she
places her creation not within the framework of a fusional urge to
display reality, but rather within that of a desire to produce or
coproduce a realness which is truer than reality, more illuminating in
terms of truth than veracity, resemblance or verisimilitude. "It would
be strange if it were a matter of the work parodying life," wrote the
artist about a previous installation.
There is an ambition in the work of Shigeko Hirakawa that I rarely find
in that of other artists who share her interest in landscape. More than
anyone else, she understands the difficulty of this work which consists
in intervening in a prolific environment that could very well do
without the presence of art. She knows she must certainly not try to
postition herself on the same ground. In this, she is poles apart from
those artists who use only natural materials in the hopes of merely
accentuating a little bit, of adding but not too much, of being there
without really being there, while all but apologizing for their
intervention. Shigeko Hirakawa has no such complex. She is conscious of
the hostility of the natural world; she has the conscience - befitting
her Japanese origins - of someone with no cultivated romantic ideas in
particular concerning 'Mother Nature'. Tame, or if necessary
domesticate, to make room for man as well. Above all, Shigeko
Hirakawa's work speaks to us of this relationship with our environment
and with the elements, of our place on earth, of the difficulty of
being cast upon it, of standing on it, of simply living on it:
questions which echo, of course, those of her own work in its capacity
to fit into an environment (a prerequisite), but essentially to inhabit
it.
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