Hollow: Odani Motohiko Exhibition Press Conference Interview
-December 16th, 2009 Maison Hermès 8th Floor Le Forum
About Hollow
Hermès: Could you tell us about the concept behind this exhibition?
Odani: The basic principle of sculpture is that it embodies a material entity. Sculpture is recognized as an object in itself, as something real. And it follows that when light shines upon a real object, it naturally creates a shadow.
This exhibition is a product of my attempt to reverse this relationship. That is to say, the original concept behind the works began with the question of whether I could make sculpture out of shadows – something negative.
In Japanese, there is the term rikonbyô (somnambulism), the so-called doppelganger phenomenon where the soul leaves the body and sees one’s own body in the same space. When this occurs, the story goes, the person either dies, or lives on while his double dies in his place. When you think about the phenomenon of doppelganger, the real body doesn’t seem to exist at all – both become incorporeal, or something very close to that state.
From ancient times, human beings have had real bodies, which created shadows, and people feared those shadows. It seems that people tend to feel greater fear towards shadows than real human beings. And it occurred to me that when you think of these shadow-like presences as material bodies, they could perhaps be related to the image of vapor in the air. I attempted to recreate this vapor-like existence into human form, or something close to it.
Hermès: Relating to the “lack of real” in the concept that you described, I would like to ask you about your choice of resin as the material for your sculptures. The texture of resin is thin and sparse compared to other materials such as marble, wood or bronze, and this seems very fitting to Hollow and echoes with the worldview expressed in the exhibition. With resin, you don’t create an object by chiseling into it; rather, it is a process of creating a mold, and shaping the inside with the outside mold. There is inherently a kind of negative-positive relationship, and I wondered whether the splitting process could already be felt in the process of production. You never know which side is the empty shell.
Also, because you literally create a mold, the fact that you can make replicas from the prototype makes the mold a symbolic existence, exceeding the original. This also seemed to be a Hollow-esque idea. Was this process of production, as well as physical sensation, reflected in the actual production?
Odani: Yes, I would say so. I actually don’t really like the FRP material itself. It’s difficult to reflect human emotions with something like transparent resin, because it doesn’t invite material fetishism. But because of this, conversely, it allowed itself to be used as an empty shell. I always aspire to make works that take the shape of drawings – and sculpture is very difficult to make like a drawing – but with these works, there was no correct form, nor was there any fixed decision of when they were supposed to be finished.
I also deliberately made use of the freedom that resin offered. For example, when you ultimately think of what it means to create a mold, there is no real substance or form.
Hermès: Tell us about the color white. People often think that the exhibition space of Hermès consists of glass blocks and white walls. But these walls are actually painted a very light gray color, so that the voluminous walls, double-layered and 7m in height, do not “collide” with the glass blocks. It just so happened that we painted the walls white when creating the space for the murals during the last exhibition. The impact was astounding. The color was so strong, and perhaps because of the unfamiliarity, it felt far from neutral. It was a moment of recognition of one’s bodily response to the weight of the color white.
So I wondered whether the color white was essential to your works, in the sense, of course, of white being devoid of color, but also in its myriad variations. The impression of your works varies considerably as the white changes expression from under the natural light of day to the illuminations by night. Could you tell us about the variations and textures of the color white in your works?
Odani: Sure. In my opinion, it’s only recent that white has gained prominence as sculptural material. Perhaps this has little to do with the works at hand, but the color white reminds me of a certain TV documentary I saw of a blind child being able to see for the first time. The first color that came into her eyes was the color of light, which she said was white. When the white sprang into her eyes, she became afraid – and because she was accustomed to darkness, she closed her eyes. It was from this story that my obsession with the color white began. There can be a completely different image of white from what we think of as neutral and pristine.
It was after this that I became blindly interested in everything white. For example, organisms preserved in formalin become white after the colors have faded, and it is the same for humans – we become white when we turn into skeletons. White is the ultimate minimalist color, and at the same time, I cannot help feeling that there exists a whiteness that is different from the simple, neutral color. It’s because of this alternative possibility that I stick to the color white.
Relationship between Sculpture and Moving Image
Hermès: When the exhibition was nearly finished, I heard you exclaim, “ah, I could have used some moving images!” and this somehow made sense to me. I wondered what it would look like if the works gained a temporal dimension – if you were to turn into moving images the movements and temporality trapped inside what is now floating in space. What kind of video works would have been created under the title Hollow? The sculptures are actually floating, but this in turn accentuates the reality that they are suspended. They are not in the least able to resist gravity – and that is precisely what I find to be erotic about this exhibition. Perhaps you could turn this world of Hollow into a video piece by making moving images out of these sensations…
Odani: I have somewhat of an idea when I think of it as a series. I want to use moving images in a way that resonate with the three-dimensional objects, creating a kind of circulating relationship with the sculptures.
Hermès: Upon creating the overall exhibition Hollow, you incorporated some new works from the New Born series in addition to the Hollow series. This gave a multi-layered dimension to the temporality and subject of the exhibition. Could you tell us about the concept behind New Born?
Odani: I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want to do with the material of sculpture, and alongside this, I’ve also started to make video works once again. What I find interesting in this process is the question of temporality. Moving images, after all, are able to manipulate the speed of time. This very simple fact is astounding when you think about it. In human existence, time always follows an established order and moves in one direction in a linear fashion. Only God has the power to bend this, but a moving image can transform temporality with nonchalance.
When this occurred to me, I marveled at the realization that moving images can show such variety by using simply speed. I also came to think that tampering with temporality is indeed related to sculpture. That is to say, making sculpture is not far from the act of controlling or cutting out a piece of time, and in this sense, moving images and sculptures do very similar things after all.
In short, I use different materials to create different things, but what really counts is the process of maneuvering. My aim, I feel, is to maneuver something like “time” within sculpture. This repetition of adding and subtracting fed into the New Born series, which is about the visualization of time and the materialization of motion.
I hoped to contrast the two different temporalities in this exhibition: New Born places time in a continuum, while Hollow shows a floating state without fixture in the state of suspension.
Title
Hermès: In the exhibition handout, you wrote a list of keywords. Did you come up with these during the process of creation, or do your works come out of these keywords which are already in your mind?
Odani: When you use the Internet search engine to look up a certain word, it comes with a tag, and if you click on it, you get another tag, and so on. It’s the same when you create on object – when you have a certain keyword, it comes attached with all sorts of tags. I feel that the works allow for a higher degree of freedom when I prepare many different tags, so that people can make connections out of them. As for the keywords themselves – yes, they come to me naturally during the production process.
Hermès: I felt that with your titles. When you were adding titles to your works in the exhibition space, I felt strongly that you were at the final stage of your sculpting. It was not a process of redefinition – of equating the title with the work – but rather, an equation of the distance between the work and the title. That is to say, you seemed to be choosing words to adjust the distance between the ideas that they would conjure, making them circulate.
Odani: I used to always give lengthy titles in my student days, but then I realized that they actually say nothing. It’s almost too internal. I realize now that it’s a bit dangerous to put the internal world straight into words. I want it to be a play of words – an intimate relationship between the work and the title, like a circulatory system.
Take the piece with what look like hands attached to the wall. Unless you are told, you wouldn’t understand that they were hands of a pianist. I actually made that configuration as a continuum of hands striking down on the piano keys. Plus, pianists are probably hiding a lot of ghosts inside them.
Regarding the expanded head of Bernini’s Ludovica, which stands as a symbol of ecstasy and is the only work in the exhibition that has real form, the keyword “placebo” appeared from the start as a way of expressing the gravity of people’s faith surrounding an icon.
I always hope that a title will bring out the content, or somehow force the content to come out. With Reversal Cradle – the phrase “from the cradle to the grave” comes to mind – I wanted to express the idea that a reversed cradle signifies death already at the moment of birth. I hoped to reinforce the work by expressing this relationship using minimum words in the title.
Horror Movie
Hermès: You said you liked horror movies. Can you talk about what attracts you to them?
Odani: When I say horror movies, I don’t mean splatter films, where there’s a lot of blood everywhere. I’m more interested in the so-called psycho-horror films, because they ultimately come down to negativity in their construction. It’s about making you feel something that doesn’t exist. People always fear the shadows of others, and a great psycho-horror film makes you feel that in every scene. That presence, I feel, is itself a kind of sculpture.
I like movies so I’ve seen all different kinds, but the scenes I find really beautiful are never simple. Take, for example, Deep Blue – it’s not just the depiction of nature that is beautiful. I’m always struck by scenes where the unfamiliar enters – those are moments of beauty for me. Unless there is a certain kind of distortion, it doesn’t get sublimated into beauty.
Also, I feel that horror movies to a great extent control human nature or the deep psyche. I’m particularly interested in that sort of thing.