The Weird and the Wonderful | TABlog | Tokyo Art Beat

Imagine if Edward Gorey had made a video installation and you should have some kind of an idea of Tabaimo’s work.

Of course, there must be relatively few people following the art scene here who have not heard of Tabaimo. She (and Tabaimo is indeed a she) has risen in the last ten years to be one of the most inventive young Japanese artists around. She has shown in New York and Paris, and this exhibition at Gallery Koyanagi comes ahead of a major exhibition starting in December at the Yokohama Museum of Art.

Just like her name (a coined compound noun literally meaning ‘bunch of potatoes’), Tabaimo characterizes her work with humour, wordplay and irony. She has talked at length with Ashley Rawlings here on TAB about the double meanings and jokes inherent in the titles of her work, and this small show is no exception. The central piece in “House” is an enthralling video installation bearing all her usual trademarks. It is brimming with a sense of the ironic gothic, of colour vibrant yet murky. Tabaimo’s work is very fun and very knowing, but it is also genuinely unsettling.

A doll’s house opens, releasing a deluge of water. Giant hands proceed to put in all the intricate bric-a-brac and paraphernalia. The attention to detail here is hilarious: these clumsy-looking hands, made even more visceral by the clunky comic book-style animation, clutching towels and table cloths. And then it jilts into the bizarre – an octopus making a sudden appearance, hastily disposed of by the god-like hands. But the tentacles continue to creep around, to sliver out of drawers and cracks in the wall. The animation gets faster and faster; the hands start to scratch themselves (possibly reflecting Tabaimo’s own history of skin conditions), it becomes more frenetic. Like a premonition we hear louder and louder the sounds of water, water which eventually spills out into the house from its unseen innards. It ends in a strange collapse, before the house shuts and the nightmare finishes. Only it doesn’t, because the video is looped and the whole thing just begins again.

The title of this piece is ‘dolefullhouse’, an obvious pun on doll house. One might be tempted to add horror house here, as, despite the humour and the surrealism, the viewing process does grow increasingly queasy. This is heightened by the curation: a large low-ceiled chamber, sealed off like a dark cave, the video projected onto the entire back wall and consuming the whole space.

The rest of this show might disappoint visitors looking to see more of the same, or indeed something like the scale of Tabaimo’s most recent other exhibition in Japan, at the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art Museum in 2006. Also, though the focus on an interior is typical, there are seemingly few references here to ukiyoe (other than perhaps the tones) or to distinctively Japanese motifs. It would also have been arguably more effective if Gallery Koyanagi had done something with their long corridor-style rooms, rather than simply lining the other 2D works on the walls. Some cubby holes, something to create intimacy — this would have been welcomed.

Nonetheless, these other pieces complement the video: wiry ink paintings of elements from its world. The most unusual of these is a wall peeling off (literally) and revealing what lies behind, a ubiquitous, lurking octopus tentacle. One key thing about Tabaimo is that she manages to make the banal amusing and also disturbing. The dark paintings are starkly executed, enhanced brilliantly by velvety backing and gold frames.

Though it is essentially just one main signature piece, do head to Gallery Koyanagi’s exhibition to see up close a work by this major artist, and also remember to visit Yokohama at the end of the year.