The facade of a European-style building lies flat on the floor, and when people strike their preferred poses on top of it, they are reflected in gravity-defying style in a giant, slanted mirror. The work can be viewed objectively from the space in front, meaning that those on the building are “performing” under that gaze. The existence of multiple viewpoints in Edificio —Buenos Airesengenders not only the experience of full immersion in a work of art, but also reciprocal relationships of see/be seen among the people sharing the setting.

Photo: Oyamada Kuniya

An old wooden boat found on the shore of Lake Towada is strung about with thousands of red threads, as if to tether it. Shiota says that as well as guiding us to unknown places, in their function of crossing water, boats sit alongside death. The boat, and the threads woven in so many layers that it is impossible to grasp any single strand, evoke the invisible, elusive things associated with our lives, such as the memories harbored by places and objects, and the connections and deaths of people.

Photo: Oyamada Kuniya

The floor at the TAC entrance is covered in vivid lines arranged in geometric patterns. At first glance this interior is the archetypal plain white cube. Following the existing architectural edge and unique features of the room, Lambie applies continuous lines of alternating color and width of vinyl tape to the floor, creating a rippling “beat” as he gradually works his way into the center. Jim Lambie’s Zoboptransforms the character and mood of the space with a rhythmic musically.

Photo: Oyamada Kuniya
Courtesy of The Artist and The Modern Institute/Toby Webster Ltd, Glasgow

Mueck’s elderly lady is recreated with vivid verisimilitude, from her wrinkled and sagging skin, to her translucent veins and individual strands of hair. The stark contrast of her unrealistic scale, at around four meters, only serves to highlight the oddness of her presence. The Australian artist is known for sculptures capturing glimpses of universal human vulnerability, often in the form of aging or loneliness. Facial expressions that seem at once stern and kind, depending on the angle, and quiet, contemplative poses, in which the figures seem to stare into thin air, encourage the viewer to empathize and imagine.

Photo: Oyamada Kuniya
Courtesy Anthony d’Offay, London

A lone pine stands on a large rock in a tiny garden. A sharply drooping branch sports green leaves, while long, deep roots cling to the rock at the base. In creating this artistic expression based on a traditional Japanese landscaping style, Yamamoto envisaged a harsh environment, and imagined how the pine that is rooted here, got its shape.

Photo: Oyamada Kuniya

Yamagiwa’s works – tiny thing I lost, halfway, I cannot be you, and tales of absence– are sited unobtrusively in various interstices around the Towada Art Center.
As you walk from one gallery to the next, look up, look down, stop, turn around, go back and forward, and in the gaps, you may just encounter a certain point or two in time. -Yamagiwa Mitsuhiro

Top Image: there, here and over there: I cannot be you
Photo: Oyamada Kuniya

Peering through darkness at the dim light, one begins to discern a roadside diner fitted out in jet black, and a highway disappearing off into the distance. In this almost unnaturally deserted nighttime realm, orange streetlights glow forlornly, while a continuous loop of muffled sound emitted by an old radio ironically gives the impression of a place isolated from the outside world. The view from the life-size fictional restaurant interior to the clever optical illusion of the outside panorama disrupts the spectator’s sense of time, distance, and place.

Photo: Hans Op de Beeck
Courtesy of Xavier Hufkens, Brussels

A cluster of clear balloons tethered in the air by net-like ropes. Saraceno made this work envisaging a time in which people might enter it. It presents the artist’s alternative to our earthbound cities: a city that floats in the air, altering form like a cloud, freed from concepts like national border or territory. The sight of the balloons tightly bound to each other also alludes to the multiplicity and interdependence of the Planet’s environments and the webs of life that inhabit and compose them.

Photo : Oyamada Kuniya

Three works, situated in the courtyard. Riverbed’s cobblestone current connects Bell of Peace, a Kyoto temple bell; and a Wish Tree from the project Ono has pursued in various locations since the 1990s. By inviting visitors to cross the river, strike the bell, and hang on the tree a strip of paper containing their wish, Ono takes people’s intangible thoughts and their very actions and turns them into worksof art.

Photo: Oyamada Kuniya
© Yoko Ono All Rights Reserved

Paul Morrison’s Ochreais a bucolic scene complete with apple tree, rendered in stark, bold black lines reminiscent of a print or papercut. Finding motifs from nature in pictures of different eras and genres, from the realistic ink drawings of Renaissance woodcuts, to modern animations, Morrison puts these onto his computer, edits them to the desired scale and proportions, and assembles them into work. The imaginary scenes produced in this manner are drawn in a familiar, reassuring style, yet at the same time, are oddly uncanny.

Photo: Iwasaki Mami

Bridge of Lightis an angular sculpture constructed from sterile, inorganic materials, that on entry, in contrast to its robust exterior, is found to be suffused with a gentle blue neon glow and floaty ambient sound. In her work Aláez interrogates the male-dominated nature of traditional sculptural expression, and imagery deemed supposedly masculine in its strength or rigidity. A combination of the robust and ephemeral, Aláez’s offering here seems to reflect the nature of our vulnerability as humans.

Photo : Oyamada Kuniya

Sterile white furniture is arranged in a room, with a hole in the ceiling about the right size for a human head. The title of this work means “marshland” in German. Take off your shoes, climb on the chair and peek through the ceiling to discover a scene unimaginable from below. By crossing the boundary between two worlds, you may encounter something never found in one alone.

Photo : Iwasaki Mami

Countless tiny human figures in red, orange, and translucent plastic are arranged sitting on each other’s shoulders in a gentle gradated form, creating an object suspended from the ceiling in the manner of a chandelier. These figures linked identically speak of the inherited knowledge and memories from previous generations we are indebted to today. The “Cause and Effect”of the title reminds us that our lives are connected to those of others in an endless chain, resonating with both past and future.

Photo: Oyamada Kuniya
Courtesy the Artist and Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York and Hong Kong

The stairway up to the roof of the Towada Art Center features a vibrant jumble of overlapping colors and forms. Dotted throughout are patterns resembling eyes, as if we are being spied on by creatures of some sort. In this pair of improvised works born out of Herrero’s impressions of Towada during his time here, we follow gradually shifting shades of color to emerge onto the TAC roof overlooking the city streets, and find the surface beneath our feet painted a blue to complement the sky.

Image: Mirror
Photo: Iwasaki Mami

With extraordinary precision, assembled with life casts, Neudecker has recreated a piece of forest, as if it were a chunk cut out of an actual woodland. Path and tree stump serve as palpable vestiges of human presence, and the work’s cropped height above the floor makes it impossible to grasp the entire scene. The theatrical lighting illuminating a shaft in the grove alludes to the human desire to see through natural darkness by bringing in light, yet conversely has the effect of doubly emphasizing the depth of the darkness, and evokes the sense of the sublime in the silent nighttime forest. In This Thing Called Darkness the ambiguous perceptions humans have toward landscape and our natural environment are not difficult to discem.

Photo: Oyamada Kuniya
Courtesy the artist with the kind support of the Forestry Commission, Bedgebury Pinetum, England

Entering the room through an automatic door, one is drawn into a soft, white space with a carpeted floor, and walls with rounded corners. Monitors show rays of light in red, blue and green, against a soundtrack of electronic noise. Reclining on the floor amid random light reflections from a mirror ball, is a mystical creature, white and furry, gaze fixed on something we cannot see. Inspired in part by classic sci-fi films such as 2001: A Space Odyssey , Sæthre’s work leads us away from the here and now to become lost in a place suspended in time and space, a past vision of the future locked within.

Photo: Oyamada Kuniya

Expanding across the floor of this rest area like a carpet is a painted mix of vibrant floral designs. Lin’s patchwork-like piece is inspired by the traditional Towada craft of Nambu weaving, in which old fabrics are torn up and woven together to be reused. Lin sees art not as some rarified act but part of everyday life, and has produced here a work befitting a space where people mix and weave new connections.

Photo: Oyamada Kuniya

Paul Morrison’s Ochrea is a bucolic scene complete with apple tree, rendered in stark, bold black lines reminiscent of a print or papercut. Finding motifs from nature in pictures of different eras and genres, from the realistic ink drawings of Renaissance woodcuts, to modern animations, Morrison puts these onto his computer, edits them to the desired scale and proportions, and assembles them into work. The imaginary scenes produced in this manner are drawn in a familiar, reassuring style, yet at the same time, are oddly uncanny.

Photo : Oyamada Kuniya
Courtesy Alison Jacques Gallery, London

With a shrewd sideways gaze and firmly pressed lips, this youngster on the wall could be grinning or just as likely, holding in thoughts. The dangling arms in ripped clothing and cross-legged stance speak of lassitude or lethargy. Rendered in simple lines and ill-proportioned contours, Nara’s creation takes on a different expression for every viewer, as if mirroring our inner selves, our memories, or the look of someone familiar to us.

Photo: Oyamada Kuniya

On a pastel-colored plane rendered like the open pages of a book sit three short lines of verse. Rozendaal says he read Matsuo Basho’s famous haiku “An ancient pond/ a frog jumps in/ the sound of water” and was intensely drawn to the enduring power of Basho’s verse. The very simplicity of this string of words, part of the artist’s “Haiku” series based on the Japanese poetry form that uses a limited number of syllables to describe richly detailed scenes, allows it to evoke a different image in the mind of everyone who sees it.

Kanchogai-dori, which until the end of World War Two was the site of a horse supply center for the Japanese Imperial Army, is known locally as Komakaido, or “Horse Highway.” Choi’s equine floral fantasy, installed on the open space facing the avenue, rears robustly as if ready to race off. A welcome bouquet for TAC visitors, Flower Horse seems to symbolize simultaneously Towada’s historical ties with horses, prayers for peace, and hope for the future.

Photo: Oyamada Kuniya

With its gangly legs firmly gripping the ground, razor jaws and large, slanted composite eyes, this fiery red creature reminiscent of a giant insectoid robot seems to challenge us aggressively. Modeled in fact on “farming” leafcutter ants (Atta cephalotes) found in the neutral Central American nation of Costa Rica, Tsubaki’s creation also seems to be warning humanity that no good can come of its persistent plundering of the planet’s resources, and relentless consumption.

Photo: Oyamada Kuniya

Fragments of Color Cubesis a work that illuminates, in multiple colors, the cluster of blocks that constitutes the TAC complex. At night, buildings that manifest as solid white cubes during the day are reconfigured into a series of planes by the light throwing into relief the rectangles of their exterior walls. A light show that changes according to the season, inspired by the natural surroundings of Towada, makes nighttime more colorful for people on the nearby streets.

Photo : Kitamura Mitsutaka