ART CITIES:Tokyo-Mariko Mori
In her works, Mariko Mori brings an uncanny combination of unique Japanese traditional elements and cutting-edge technology. Her works present popular culture in the 21st Ccentury while symbolically portraying religious and philosophical aspects of the East’s inner universe. Mariko Mori during the ‘90s, created works such as “Play With Me”, but her recent works, however, are in striking contrast with her early works and show a more Minimalist style.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Scai The Bathhouse ArchiveGallery Archive
In her new exhibition “Cycloid”, as indicated by the title, the focus is a new work in the Mariko Mori’s “Cycloid” series. Cycloid is the general term used to indicate the path traced by a point on the rim of a circle as the circle rolls along a defined line. Mori’s works in this series incorporate the kind of shapes made by an epicycloid, where the defined line is the rim of a circle. Covered with a radiant pearlescent coating, and brimming with an energy that allows one to sense the eternal cycle, her aluminum sculpture consists of complex, intricate shapes that intertwine and reach outwards. Also on display is sculpture based on interpretations of the ekpyrotic model and brane cosmology, theories that propose that our universe has no beginning or end, but goes through a continuous cycle of birth and destruction, and that there may even be universes that exist parallel to our own. These concepts are surprisingly similar to the ideas of fusion with nature, and reincarnation that have long been themes of Mori’s practice. She has incorporated these theoretical concepts as elements in her art, visualizing them through forms that resemble Möbius strips. The exhibition also includes photo-paintings based on drawings Mori made while viewing the ocean in Okinawa, creating manifestations of nature’s invisible energy and the world of subatomic particles.
Info: Scai The Bathhouse Gallery, Kashiwayu-Ato, 6-1-23 Yanaka, Taito-ku, Tokyo, Duration: 11/3-23/4/19, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 12:00-18:00, www.scaithebathhouse.com
