Floating, Shifting, Touched, Untouched:

On Mariko Asai’s Notebooks

Toshiharu Suzuki, Curator, Toyota Municipal Museum of Art

 

I would first like to make a brief introduction on the artist Mariko Asai. My impression of her is the word “fluffy”—that is, in both geographic and feather-like ways. These characteristics might be somewhat akin to her early series in which medicine packages floated fluffily upon springs. Or they are like her photographic works of dust that had piled up over a long passage of time. With a puff of air, she seems to swiftly move about. That is why when I thought she was in Aichi Prefecture, she was actually in Tokyo. And once, she even went with a Japanese band on a tour in America. And when I thought she was in Lisbon, she was in Northern Europe, or else in the Arctic Circle. On this occasion, she is in Sapporo, Hokkaido for her show at the CAI—Contemporary Art Institute (2016).

Nonetheless, despite the fact that her works are created and exhibited at each site, it is rare for viewers to perceive signs such as a specific place name, or the peculiarities and history of that land. Her works are just like dust on some surface that will readily stick to some other surface with a puff of air. If I may add, Asai’s works rarely reveal anything about her as an individual, such as her personal characteristics or sense of warmth; rather, they remain anonymous. Hence, her work can also be seen as yours. Such a work is what Asai creates. 

That is why it should be perfectly fine for the viewer to leaf through the pages of her notebooks that are placed on desks in an archipelagic form, and to walk back and forth in the space as he or she pages through the other ones. In Asai’s notebooks, which she creates through stacking many pieces of carbonless copy paper together, the pages continue to be developed through the forms of her images that have remained from the previous pages. But this does not mean that there is any specific beginning or end. Her image that is initially depicted in silver lines is transcribed in blue on the next page. Both of those forms appear and then disappear far before being completed as pictures or drawings. Depicted in her notebooks are types of images that we tend to unconsciously recall, or a form that our eyes might follow without any particular image in mind, and which might be forgotten the next moment. Such a form that Asai depicts partially remains on the next page, but it is then hardly visible on the page that follows—that is, aside from the faint traces of the pressure from her pencil.

The images that appear are transcribed and then eventually disappear, leaving behind the faint traces of lines. The continuation of this process takes place before any specific meanings or aims are applied to those images. The accumulation of lines that at times become entangled seems to follow such a semi-autonomous system. But it was rather overwhelming to actually stand before so many of her notebooks, each of which has a fair amount of thickness. The repetitious process of viewing the depicted lines and then turning to the next page to see what has been transcribed likely involves the feeling of vertically digging into the notebook. In other words, whereas the act of seeing her work strictly remains as it is so as to have a sense of lightness, the notebook is there in the form of a stratum that has a solid sense of being. That is why in this gallery space, in addition to the viewer’s movements of shifting from one notebook to the other ones, there is also a horizontal sense of movement from the images that vanish from the pages. At the same time, there is also an inherent downward, vertical direction via her depictions of images.

This sense of thickness that goes in a vertical direction reminds us, with our eyes or in our minds, that we must be seeing too many things. It could also be indicating that we have forgotten too many things (though it might be that they are stored somewhere in our bodies). This is just like how one is certain that the snow that accumulated during wintertime was there for a while but that it disappeared somewhere with the arrival of spring. One knows that this snow that seems to have disappeared will in time return from the sky, for the snow has diffused into the atmosphere and penetrated into the ground. Asai’s notebooks seem to be fluffily omnipresent; that is, while they exist before our eyes as strata that allow us to sink deep into her images, and carry with them their sense of vertical and horizontal movements, they also diffuse in all directions in invisible forms. 

Upon more careful observation, among the seemingly incoherent sequence of images are several forms, such as a hole or pieces of hair, that provide clues to understanding her works. There are probably many others, but if you discover such clues, then I recommend that you take your time and look through one of her notebooks at your own pace. At those moments when her forms are about to transiently disappear as if they were sideslipping and receding into the depths of her notebooks, you may feel you have “touched something.” That “something” you have touched will probably switch to and connect with the next “something.” It is as if the vision that lies beyond your hand, which you thought had touched something like a turkey, is sinking in darkness. Or perhaps it is like how today is different from the time when an inscription on a tree could be used to guide us as the day sank into the deep blue darkness of night. That feeling of uncertainty is certainly not enough for the contemporary viewer. But because of this sensation, we are able to imagine with certainty the whereabouts of the solid sense of being that floats about here and there in Asai’s exhibition space. 

(Translated by Taeko Nanpei)     

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