I didn’t really know about 21_21 Design Sight before visiting it. I learnt that the building was designed by Japanese architect Tadao Ando and the museum was created by Ando and fashion designer, Issey Miyaki. The building is at the edge of a quiet park where families stroll and children play on the grass.
The write up on the website describes perfect vision (in English) as being 20/20. The founders of 21_21 gave it this name to allude to our seeing into the future. The space between ( _ ) represents the distance between our eyes.
Currently, 21_21 has an exhibition called “pooploop”. It focuses on our environment – from our immediate surroundings to outer space. The exhibition posits that waste is marginalized in our world but the truth is that it never really vanishes.
The exhibit looks at waste in all forms. Poop is classified into different categories as seen below. (Translations via Google Translate)
Researchers can use this classification to quickly identify excrement.
Artist, Koro Ihara, renders sculptures made from the lacquered excrement of those very animals he sculpts.
Fascinated by the residue left behind by earthworms Koho Ihara collected hundred of intact soil casings, then glazed and fired them. Finally he dressed them in gold turning then entire thing into a panel of gold. This piece he calls made in the ground.
Taku Satoh’s Time-B installation draws a parallel between human intervention required to initiate the hour glass’ continual movement — removing the ball, upturning the hour glass and replacing the ball and the human effort needed to set our global environment on the right course again.
It’s a visually striking installation —from the shadows cast on the objects and ground, to the way light touches the objects in different ways.
The black sand in each hour glass is finely crushed slag (a by-product of processing iron and steel).
At first, I wasn’t sure about going to this exhibition but I’m so glad I did. I learnt a lot and being in the space Ando and Miyaki created was surely worth the visit.
Copyright © 2024
Lisi-Tana.com
All Rights Reserved
Thanks for visiting my blog. Consider signing up to be notified when there is a new post, or become a monthly subscriber to have access to all my posts.