China and Japan get along at Mori Museum
ABOVE: detail from what we think is Cao Fei’s video work Hip Hop (2003) in which passersby on a city street are asked to do spontaneous dance moves. The work is part of the Mori Art Museum’s “Follow Me!” show, on right now in Tokyo.
Like everyone else these days, we’re cuckoo for everything Chinese right now. But what caught our eye about this review of “Follow Me!: Chinese Art at the Threshold of the New Millennium” is that the review is a) from the Japan Times, and b) the show is in Japan. Now, China and Japan aren’t enjoying the most harmonious of diplomatic relations lately, what with all the accusations of war crimes and the smashing of embassy windows in Beijing. Obviously, the show in question, on now at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, was planned well before all that revisionist textbook ruckus a few months ago, but it still strikes us as odd. Still, art exhibits in the aid of mutual understanding can only be a positive good, right?
The Japan Times review focuses on what sound like the most crowd-pleasing pieces in the show, which in Japan means crazy pop-culture sincerely-ironic video installations and model skyscrapers that race around like bumper cars by remote control. There are two China shows on at the same time at the Mori, the other being “China: Crossroads of Culture“. Both shows run through September 4.