March 11 ? Sept. 12, 2010 - Fondation Cartier pour l'art ...

“Making such comparisons
between machines and animals
is like a children’s game,
but there is also a serious
analytical component to it.[…]
These pictures may seem
funny and can make us laugh.
But quite seriously, a whale
is much better in the water
than a hydroplane.
A dragonfly can fly better
than a helicopter. All of these
man-made technologies are
inspired by living creatures,
but they can never equal them.”
Beat Takeshi Kitano
Grandly seated in the middle of
the room, a gigantic, clattering,
laughably inefficient sewing machine
serves as an ironic metaphor
for contemporary art.
The Kitano Sewing
Machine “Hideyoshi”:
Toyotomi Hideyoshi
is the name of a 16th-century
Japanese warlord who
unified the country following
a century of upheaval.
Right beside this, transgenically
bred fish pre-stuffed with sushi
poke fun at technological progress.
underscoring his respect for traditional
craftmanship, Kitano entrusted
the production of the fish to Hagi
ceramists whose expertise dates
back to the 17th-century. A truly
miraculous catch, the installation
is decorated with a flag, like those
flown by fishermen to ensure a good
catch. He has set afloat “Takeshi’s
Boat” affiliated with the “Fishermen’s
Association of Adachi-ku.”
Adachi-ku is a working-class
neighborhood of Tokyo and
Kitano’s childhood home.
Passionate about science, Kitano
naturally included scientific games
and metaphors in the exhibition.
The Tower of Hanoi is a game
invented in the 19th century
by a French mathematician and
practiced—according to Kitano—
by Buddhist monks for meditation.
As presented here, this brain
teaser would take 580 billion years
to finish—an inconceivable time
span for the human mind to ponder.
Children can play simplified
versions of the game.
Similarly, the installation Probability
Of Chance also highlights the
disparity in scale between human
time and the time of creation.
using a clock, a bolt and a vibrating
base, it presents a scientific metaphor
that insinuates how the appearance
3
of life on earth was complete chance.
The stopwatch is set at Kitano’s birthday.
“On earth, we are under
the impression that we all live
in synchronous, equivalent time.
But this impression is utterly
false. Time is not perceived in
the same way by different cultures.
Time is not a universal concept.
It represents something
different to each individual.” 1
Beat Takeshi Kitano
1. Takeshi Kitano, in collaboration with Michel Temman,
Kitano par Kitano, Grasset, 2010
With a humorous bow to art history,
the Monsieur Pollock installation
presents a machine designed to
create a series of paintings by this
major figure of American abstract
expressionism. In the bookstore
on the mezzanine, several different
painting techniques, as well as the
results of these forged experiments,
are on display.
In a shed in the garden Tama-Jii
and Kon-Tan depicts the two opposing
spirits found in all humans and all
trees. Embodying the positive side
of the human soul, “Tama-Jii” is a
portmanteau word coined by Kitano
composed of Tamashii (spirit or soul)
and Jii (old man). Kon-Tan (schemer)
embodies the negative side of the
human soul. In humans, Kon-Tan
is situated near the intestines and
Tama-Jii near the heart. In trees, the
former withers the branch in which it
lives, whereas the latter fortifies it.