[Title] Line Dance
[Artist] Takeharu Ogai
[Date] September 20 – November 20, 2007
While a woman is dozing off in a chair, someone appears to have slipped into the room. The intruder has rigged a meticulous scheme that apparently reaches to all corners of the space. There’s no telling what the purpose behind the ingenious plot may be, but Hermès products have been used in all of the components. The “crime” must certainly be the handiwork of “Mr. H.” Clearly, the tricks extend to all corners of the room, perhaps penetrating all the way into the dreams of the sleeping woman.
This autumn’s window, with the intricately arranged rows of dominos particularly standing out, is the brainchild of artist Takeharu Ogai. The idea of dominos falling over in a perfectly controlled sequence was taken from the image of a flamboyant line dance. The setting, meanwhile, is the very normal room of a young woman. The scene of her napping in the room oblivious to what is going to happen, the dominos that have apparently been set up in a flash and the various other rigged gadgets function to stimulate the imagination. For that matter, who in the world could have put the dominos into place so quickly, and what will happen if the door is opened?
Well, the storyline follows that opening the door knocks the umbrella over, instantly causing the dominos to begin to fall. When dominos forming the circle on the floor have all toppled, the match at the center of the circle ignites the thread overhead, moving the flow of falling dominos to the larger window on the right. The Hermès products, which have been arranged on the shelves in a subtle balance, also fall down in sequence. The flow is engineered to continue past the products at the small windows on the right, eventually ending up back outside the door at the window on the left.
The window display portrays this ingenious set-up, in which adding the slightest force will instantly trigger a chain-reaction collapse. All the time, however, the dozing woman remains totally unaware that such a commotion is about to take place. Gazing at the scene gives the pleasure of visualizing the myriad of activity that will come to pass once the chain-reaction is set off.
Takeharu Ogai
Born in 1969 in Chiba Prefecture, went on to graduate from the College of Art and Design of Musashino Art University. Had worked with Ai Ogawa as a team since 1997. In 2002, participated in “Emotional Site” (Sagacho Shokuryo Building in Tokyo), “Private Luxury” (Manno Museum) and other exhibitions. In 2004 presented his first one-man show under the theme of “Way to the Fountain” (at the Maison Hermès 8th Floor Forum).