Once More to the Space of Sun and Moon
Where nature changes gently and you seem to engage in a dialogue with the artwork
Leaving behind the Earth Room, 'Utsurohi'
Nagi MOCA is a museum that exhibits three permanent works, and
all that remains are the Sun Room and the Moon Room. Here, there is
architecture designed for the works, and spaces that give further meaning to them.
Placing myself in the space, feeling the quality of what is there with my whole body.
From a space draped in silence to a dynamic space. Scattered photographs
The figure and ground of the floor and ceiling are inverted. In the center of the room is a thin black cylinder,
which acts as a device to expand the senses, becoming a connection to the next space,
and then I step into the cylindrical building.
What unfolds there is a space where gravity, directionality, and reality are ambiguous,
with benches and seesaws on the ceiling. A floor and ceiling in complementary colors of red and green,
and stone gardens that invert on the left and right. It becomes a perspective impossible in everyday life.
They are arranged along the inner cylindrical space, distorted and floating.
Losing one's sense of physical balance, amidst a combination of primary colors, a rock garden, playground equipment, and space.
Rather than thinking, one simply feels what has been installed.
That rock garden is from Ryoan-ji Temple, complete with an oil-clay wall and an onigawara roof tile.
It connects to the memory of Ryoan-ji Temple visited once before.
Within this surreal space, a sense of déjà vu seems to drift.
The rock garden of Ryoan-ji, an existence so quintessentially Japanese,
as if indifferent to the margins between the arrangement of large and small stones,
is placed in the space as a more symbolic presence.
The inverting cylindrical space is bathed in light, as if it were beginning to move.
Covered in nostalgia and familiarity, as well as strangeness and instability
In a space detached from reality, I accept those emotions
It was created by Shusaku Arakawa + Madeline Gins. Speaking of those two
I am reminded of the Site of Reversible Destiny in Yoro, Gifu. There, on an overwhelming scale
unexpected things are scattered about. While remembering my past travels
I hope to search for their traces again someday
On the walls of the small room connecting the three works are early sketches
of the Sun Room. In them, an inverted five-story pagoda of Horyu-ji Temple is drawn
and the process of transitioning to something more symbolic, like the rock garden of Ryoan-ji Temple, remains
There are also sketches of transition on the wall. While drawn to the strangeness of the three works
To the final moon room. There, Kazuo Okazaki's HISASHI is installed.
In a space wrapped in silence and hushed memories.
HISASHI in a crescent-moon-shaped space. The work is at the edge of a table.
It is a representation of the moment when dripping plaster hardens.
The work is enveloped in negative space, and from the narrowed opening, light travels along the wall,
spreading out and being absorbed into the space along with the sound.
The moon room possesses a stillness as if time has stopped.
At the Nagi Museum of Contemporary Art, three distinct spaces unfold,
and there, one simply lets their body align with the space.
I visited the Nagi Museum of Contemporary Art for the first time in over a decade. Before, I was chasing after my young children and it wasn't a place to immerse myself in the space, but now, I feel the space with my whole body once again.
By placing myself in a space of movement and stillness, concrete and abstract, instability and composure, and heterogeneity, I once again experienced the uniqueness of the Nagi Museum of Contemporary Art building.
It stands against the backdrop of Nagi's nature, possessing a space and architecture designed solely to contain three works,
each independent, maintaining relationships through their own unique forms and qualities.
The space seems to flicker, move, and settle.
I enjoyed the museum where the works, the space, and the architecture intersect and resonate with one another.