Tokyo-in The Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo looks a single crowd of the room looks at the unfolding of Ryuichi Sakamoto and Shiro Takatani’s “Time Time” (2024). The shadow of a woman who is one shōA classic Japanese reed instrument, slowly crawls over the three screens on the wall, her image reflected in a glassy puddle of water on the floor. The room is so full that I can hardly move.
That is the power of the late Sakamoto to attract a crowd in Japan. He sold millions of plates as part of Yellow Magic Orchestra and became the first in the nation to win the Oscar for the best original score. Even two years after his death, his face Still decorates magazine covers. See sound, hear timeSomehow the first extensive exhibition of the artist in Japan, respectful, coherent and moving, his persona and themes investigate for decades – no small performance given the most pieces of collaborations with other artists – although a few couples feel less than compatible.
Cinema, a form of art in which the time is short of time and the dreams manifest, certainly informs the composer’s career as a media artist and various works in See a sound These themes seem to approach ways that improve or continue the cinematic medium. Another Takatani collaboration, “Life – fluid, invisible, inaudible …” (2007), for example, project scenes from science, nature and history, such as the famous images of J. Robert Oppenheimer that the Trinity test, Due to a schedule of fog-filled, plexiglaswater tanks, which suggests the blurry, non-linear association of dream logic.
In one room, films by Apichatpong Weerasethakul play on adjacent screens: “Durmiente” (2021) include unused images from the director’s function Memoria (2021) shows the character of Tilda Swinton, while “Async – First Light” (2017) Sakamotos “Life, Life” links with video Weerasethakul Shot of daily life. The fuzzy, Domestic empire-Gue Lo-Fi texture of the digital images makes it seem as if “async first light” is the dream of the sleeping Swinton, who talks about the way our subconscious mind reoriented us.
In other pieces, the presence of the composer is felt deeper, such as a Yūrei Harify the corridors. “Async – Volume” (2023) Add a series of iPhones and iPads in the walls as small windows and offers us a glimpse of the home studio of Sakamoto. In “Music plays images x images playing music” (1996–97/2024) We come across the musician as a spooky green holographic projection that piano plays, derived from video recording of an actual performance. Comments radiate from the piano -like Guitar hero Precious stones, shifting form with crescendos and diminuendos. One room shows the piano Sakamoto saved from the Tsunami of 11 March 2011 That was ‘coordinated by nature’. A machine was rigged to play the keys to the piano with random intervals; I thought of his first meeting with the instrument, recorded in the documentary Ryuichi Sakamoto: CODA (2017), in which he has restored the test in the destroyed high school from which it was restored. The date of my visit, coincidentally, took place on the birthday of the Cataclysmic event, improving the feeling that the spirit of Sakamoto was in the room with us, sitting on the piano.
But not all works are related. Carsten Nicolai’s film “Endo Exo” (2024), with images of animal skeletons in European museums set on the sad latest album by Piano Sketches by Sakamoto, implement the music of the composer in a way I felt was too superficial and Maudlin. In the neighborhood, however, a woman was driven to tears by the images. Just like in the cinema, the experience of See sound, hear time Is not limited for the screen, but instead a collective encounter that made this after the day of a great artist, felt all the deeper.
Ryuichi sakamoto: see sound, seeing time Continue in the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (4 Chome-1-1 Miyoshi, Koto City, Tokyo, Japan) until March 30. The exhibition was compiled by Sachiko Namba, Tomoe Moriyama and Mio Harada.
