I visited Chaos*Lounge’s “Hametsu*After,” held at the Roppongi Hills A/D Gallery.
“Chaos*Lounge” is an art collective led by Yohei Kurose.
Believing that the works of the artists of Chaos*Lounge contain a new creativity and critical sensibility rooted in the Internet / digital age, we present our works with the strong conviction that the expressions born of such processes are an “art” with its own distinctive value. —Quoted from the official website
In 2010, Chaos*Lounge held an exhibition called “Hametsu*Lounge.”
It was an exhibition created together with IT engineers, in an era when—in the 2000s—the Internet was spreading, SNS was being born, and web platforms were being built up as our infrastructure.Eight years on from “Hametsu*Lounge,” we are once again attempting a collaboration with IT engineers. Over these eight years, both the discourse about the information society and the information society itself have changed dramatically.
What do we seek from information technology? What kind of information society do we hope for? Alongside a changing reality, our ideals are also shifting.
“Hametsu*After” is an attempt to illuminate, from the standpoint of contemporary art, the dreams and desires of an information society that has continued to change with the times.Yohei Kurose
This exhibition seems to also occupy the position of a sequel to “Hametsu*Lounge,” held eight years ago.
Riding up the escalator that leads to the venue, the first thing that struck me was the overwhelming work by Ume-Labo = Kazuki Umezawa.
Within a large canvas of about size 50, countless intricate collages are packed—yet the coherent color palette and composition allow you to take it in comfortably as a whole. It’s magnificent work. I could have kept looking at it forever.
Throughout the venue, installations, paintings, and video works by many artists and engineers were on display.
In the middle of the venue there was a conspicuously empty space—a spot that could be immediately identified as such. According to the statement handed out in the venue, “sampo,” a venture collective in architecture that had been scheduled to exhibit, withdrew, and this was a display that made that fact plain. What could have happened…? I felt a slight discomfort at the deliberate way of putting it on public view.
What kind of collective is “sampo”? While looking into that, I came across this video. Very cool, very impressive.
It’s a group led by representatives Dairiku Murakami and Issui Shioura and their peers. They are all in their early twenties—so young. Their future activities are much to look forward to.
Summary
While the overall balance of the exhibition felt harmonious, the empty space at the center kept nagging at me.
And the meaning of bringing the behind-the-scenes matter of sampo’s withdrawal into the foreground and sharing it with visitors was not entirely clear to me.
Rather than just “airing it,” wasn’t there some other way? I would have loved to see a distinctly artist-collective angle or response.
