Queensland Art Gallery - Queensland Government

Shinji Ohmaki
Dissolving into light
It is often said that artists ‘transform spaces’, yet their approaches
vary greatly. The works of Shinji Ohmaki transform space, but not by
assimilation; rather, by dissimilation. 1 Aristotle wrote that ‘Art imitates
nature’; Ohmaki’s works neither imitate nature nor try to be natural.
Instead, they make us recognise that we, as human beings, are ‘others’,
existing outside the natural laws of space.
I remember the first time I walked into Ohmaki’s 2002 installation
ECHO. I felt a sense of dislocation as the bright flowers drawn with
food colouring on the floor began to blur and disintegrate from the
impact of my own footsteps, and were left as a stain on the floor. I was
the one who destroyed the beauty of the work.
Works that encourage audience participation, and require viewers
to complete them, tend to be united under the banner of ‘relational’
or ‘interactive’ art. In the case of ECHO, however, the installation
dissimilates us, making us aware that the beauty of the flowers
is artificial on several levels. It is created by human hands and,
furthermore, drawn in artificial food colouring, the result of human
desire to make natural colours and flavours more intense. It is the
viewer who collapses this artificiality.
According to the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, flowers and
plants are not intended to be beautiful; it is nature’s rationality that
gives them beauty. However, beauty created by people is motivated
by a desire that Kant called ‘purpose’. 2 At first glance, Ohmaki’s
works often appear seductive and serene, perhaps because of their
accessibility and use of appealing motifs, such as flowers, soap
bubbles and light. On the other hand, the works gently point out
that human life and energy motivated by desire or ‘purpose’ can
sometimes be violently transformed — and this transformation may
not always be welcome.
anime film Akira, in which the lead character’s spirit becomes fused
with his body, which dissolves into light and then transforms into energy.
The white ropes and white light surround viewers in the glass space,
merging them into the glowing installation like the character in the
film. Liminal Air – descend – 2007–09 is a work inviting an experience of
dissolution, in which we become fused with our environment.
In Ohmaki’s most recent installation, Vacuum Fluctuation 2009, shown
at Tokyo Wonder Site Shibuya, the dregs of consumer society —
represented by tonnes of industrial slag — gradually fell to the floor
from a small hole in the ceiling during the course of the exhibition.
Like a grisly hourglass, the work registered how human beings are
consuming the earth’s energy and rapidly destroying its environment.
Shinji Ohmaki’s practice is beautiful. The seductiveness and serenity
of his work may perhaps overshadow the fact that his practice also
works as a warning to contemporary society. Human beings are a part
of nature, but will be dissimilated easily, as Ohmaki’s work tells us, if we
do not pay it enough attention. Yet Ohmaki never becomes cynical. He
maintains hopes and dreams, and tries to encourage us to coexist with
our natural environment — by communicating through art.
Shihoko Iida
Endnotes
1 ‘Dissimilation’ means to become dissimilar or less similar to one’s environment. In
this essay, the word means that a viewer becomes alien in the installation space by
invading and destroying its spatial harmony, and comes to realise his/her isolated
existence in the environment.
2 See Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Judgement, 1790, trans. Shinoda, Hideo,
Iwanami Shoten, Japan, 1964.
Shinji Ohmaki
Japan b.1971
Liminal Air – descend – 2007
Nylon string, fluorescent light, glass / Installation view,
21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa /
Image courtesy: Tokyo Gallery + BTAP / Photograph:
Tadasu Yamamoto
Still, Ohmaki does not place us in a double bind; rather, his works offer
multifarious viewpoints, particularly in his ‘Liminal Air’ series started
in 2003. These massive installations invite us to experience multiple
ideas of ‘liminality’, including the reversal of inside and outside, the
visible and invisible, body and spirit, and life and death. In 2003,
Ohmaki played with physiological and spatial liminality, covering the
entire ceiling of the Tokyo Wonder Site Hongo gallery space with a
large cascade-like structure made of plaster, which reached down
to the floor. Later that year, at Gallery A4 (A-quad) in Tokyo, Ohmaki
constructed a new version of the work by suspending approximately
120 000 braided nylon ropes from the ceiling. In 2007, at the 21st
Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, this work was
developed further to create Liminal Air – descend – 2007. Here, Ohmaki
hung approximately 120 000 braided nylon ropes from the ceiling in
a specially constructed glass space filled with subdued lighting. The
work crystallised a concept he drew from a scene in the 1988 Japanese
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