“The foreign obsession with Japan’s material culture began soon after the opening of the nation’s ports in 1853,” Matt Alt writes, detailing how the West fell in love with what became known as Japonisme in French. “Often overlooked, however,” he continues, “is the fact that, at the same time, the western world possessed an equal or even greater fascination with the absence of Japanese stuff.”
In fact, there is a straight line from an observation by the UK’s first ambassador to Japan (quoted by Alt: “There is something to admire in this Spartan simplicity of habits, which seems to extend through all their life, and they pride themselves upon it.”) to contemporary self-help gurus such as Marie Kondo and her Netflix show.
As Alt outlines, none of this actually makes sense: “If Japan truly were a minimalist paradise, why would it need Kondos and Sasakis in the first place?” (Fumio Sasaki is another self-help guru.)
But labels stick not because they’re truthful but because they’re underpinned by ideology. That a lack of material possessions in early modern Japanese history might simply have reflected the general poverty of larger segments of the population escaped most outside observers.
You only have to go to Japan today and look around to find a country that is considerably more complex than the serene paradise of Zen temples and Muji stores inhabited by people who prefer to live with less.
In fact, that idea is belied by some of the most well known attractions of the country, such as the famous Shibuya crossing. How is that zen? Or step into any of the hyper commercialized public spaces to encounter New York’s Times Square on steroids. Again, there’s absolutely nothing zen about those spaces, with their onslaught of audiovisual cues.
Artists such as, for example, Osamu Kanemura have long focused on the visual clutter (let’s stick with Alt’s word choice). In the West, Kanemura is mostly known through his Spider’s Strategy, a depiction of the clutter of electricity and utility wires in Tokyo’s built environment.
Apart from being a writer, this artist has long moved into making videos and ambitious installations of his work, and Spider’s Strategy does not even remotely capture the breadth of Kanemura’s output around his main theme of work.
Interestingly, it was through Kanemura’s Instagram feed that I came across Kohei Maekawa‘s You Can Fix a House With Enough Duct Tape.
Much like eBay, Instagram has lost almost all of its utility as a site where photography can be discovered. But you can win the lottery, and there are those rare moments when you can find genuinely interesting work you haven’t seen before or snatch up something great on eBay. Having just managed to do both, I’m thinking that there’s a long dry spell ahead of me.
Regardless, Maekawa’s book is self-published, and I bought it directly from the artist who very kindly shipped the book before I had even had had a chance to pay for it (if he has his own website, I have not been able to locate it; I messaged him through his Instagram account).
The book comes in the form of a folded piece of cardboard with a photograph attached to the front and the title and artist’s name on the back (in Japanese and English). Inside, there’s a statement about the work (the English version was produced using a combination of DeepL and ChatGPT), a small (inkjet) print, and a set of unbound sheets of prints. Everything is held together with a single binding clip, the type that you might use in an office setting.
Whether or not this is a book or a portfolio of prints is too boring a conversation for me to engage in (the accountants of the photo world can argue about this). Conceptually, though, the rickety construction of this publication is in full service of what the photographs show. Having worked as a delivery driver in suburban Tokyo for years, Maekawa photographed the kind of folk art that he encountered while doing his job: involuntary sculptures if you will or maybe bricolage.
Maekawa mostly photographed at night with a flash, which serves to enhance the sculptural properties of the various objects he came across, a dazzling array of useless beauty. Maybe it is because my late father-in-law had produced similar objects in his workshop and backyard that I am particularly interested in the work. You might be able to find these kinds of art works that nobody would consider as such in many other places of the world.
Whatever it might be, I’m finding myself deeply fascinated by Maekawa’s photographs, especially given that the visual delight they offer does not appear to fade away. And much like the photographer, I can’t help but wonder about the people who are responsible for this kind of visual culture. “The open-ended egos and ideas embedded in their creations are uncharted territory,” he writes, “and to me, at least, remain beyond reach.”
And therein lies the beauty of it all: doesn’t art often start exactly where understanding ceases?
The artistic geniuses behind the various installations encountered by Kohei Maekawa while delivering pizza are likely to remain anonymous. They do not have a place within the grim sphere known as the art world. But their ambitions and ideas nevertheless have resulted in the creation of often surprisingly complex pieces of art.
Neoliberal thinking has brought us the idea of art for everybody (meaning: everybody can consume art by placing some money on the table). You Can Fix a House With Enough Duct Tape, with its Arte Povera elements, shows us the counter model: art can be made by everybody. And it can be enjoyed if you keep an eye out for it.
Recommended.
You Can Fix a House With Enough Duct Tape, photographs and text by Kohei Maekawa; unbound set of prints; self-published; 2024
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