Reading the Art Museum -
Hyokeikan and the Art of Today
During the first realization of PARASCOPE, in the National Museum of Tokyo, Matsui reduced the awe-inspiring loftiness of the sacral architecture of Japan's oldest museum by installing a bright realm of color. Looking upwards at the high ceiling was only possible through a tube-like structure in to which only one viewer at a time could slip. The glance through the auratic colored space made the vault seems less huge. The altered perception led one to see the altered cupola as a flat ornamental picture. From above one looked down in to a maw possessed of a mysterious suction.
Berndt Schulz Excerpt from catalogue essay for The Outside's Inside, Heidelberg Kunstverein, 2004 |
Parascope
spandex, steel, 830x455 cm (installation view Tokyo National Museum, 2001) |
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