Strangely, ideas, like objects, when you come close up to them, rarely reveal their identity--you end up knowing less up close, yet move back and the parts get blurry, and the whole starts to take on more parts.There is no end to this trouble, yet most get by.

A cup has an outside place to hold and an inside place to hold--the cup holds and empties. Someone holds the cup--fills and empties it. This relationship between the cup holding and emptying, and the holder filling and emptying gives semblance of the life and function of the cup and the holder. Common sense tells us that the holder, unless a machine, can move away from the cup and form different relationships, involving in any number of different activities, and experiences. Sensibly, the holder with the cup, and the holder without the cup can be two different entities, at least from a certain position and distance.

We can go on and get the holder without the cup to do a whole bunch more stuff, and further split any relation the cup with the holder might have had. It appears now, the short intermittent relation between the cup and the holder is not likely to tell us much about the holder, but does quite a lot about the cup--and, as it works out, the deal is most cups have short lives, while the holder with or without the cup has a long life.

That is except when there is repetition.

The cup you drink out of, you may drink out of every day.

You get to know your cup more--you personalize, and if your cup has trouble fitting in, well, you go out and buy one that will. So really a cup does have a life to talk about after all, if it's the right one, and if it is efficent at doing what it does, continually, everyday.

Some things don't have a chance, though. And, alas, as we say--that is life!

For cup holders there is the possibility of life hereafter. For less fortunate things there is recycle. At any rate, I'll leave the point mute--and get on to why I am here.

A group show at Gallery Twinspace, Osaka, where four artists are showing chose to agree on an exhibition title. For one reason or another they came up with ERROR. I'm going to focus on two participators in the exhibition, Hiroaki Morita and Katsuhisa Sato.

How errors are tackled depends on person, and the show at 'Twinspace' does just that--exposes the differences in perception (in) error, humorously, personally, and even nonsensically.

In Morita's case he positions and animates objects from the everyday to touch an 'internal space'--a poetic realm full of incongruities, potentials, and anomalies. The work looks simple--unadorned, and unpretentious. Objects such as mirrors, screws, and pet bottles are employed to open a dialogue, first between the objects themselves, and then through an inquisitiveness that comes along with the encounter.

There is an elegant quietness to it all and while this prevails through the experience a slow drama of a different kind starts to unfold. Consumed and used up items are relaxed from their near death experience--Morita suggests there is a good second life to them, that how we have come to know these objects, within their daily environment, do not tell the whole story, or, do not offer their full potential.

When I think about Morita's work I think back to the cup. And this time I am inclined to do something hazardous and place the holder, at least metaphorically, inside the cup, which is quite possible as the cup can hold. No longer do I need to think about the holder with or without the cup, because the cup is always there--holding the holder.

Yet to get back to Morita's position.

Two bent screws protruding from the corner of the wall, which would not likely draw attention, sit there from a distance with nothing much touching in mind. Closer up, I notice something going on, but then, not much. The bent screws are moving around past each other, missing without touching, close, and sometimes closer to each other's arc. As I move away, I sense I am taking this small episode with me--oddly, relaxed.

'From Evian to Volvic' tells partly of an experience Morita had while in London, watching Evian mineral water being poured into a Volvic bottle. What struck him most was not one brand's mineral water being poured into another brand's bottle, in fact he said he was not even interested in the mineral water as a drinkable liquid, instead, what intrigued him was the idea of colorless fluid moving from one preference into another. Both bottles for all their difference hold 1.5 litres.

Installed in the gallery the bottles transferring this fluid take on more than just their brand names.

There is gravity, and the distance the drip must fall, and the tiny opening through which each drip must pass. There is the sound of the just audible, yet easily recognizable splatter as a drip first hits plastic then splash as the liquid slowly rises. There is the invisible, and there is the inevitable.

A fray initiated in the clash of labels and shape overspills into a hyper explosion of sound, sight, and speed. Morita says the distance of the bottles, and the rate of the tiny drips, depend on the location, so when properly installed, he says, the process will take over 24 hours.

It's easy to image colorless movement long after the lights go out.

For Katsuhisa Sato the future needs no introduction--it is about challenge and hope in the face of fear.

Of the four in the exhibition, Sato probably is the most passionate about this, and plays it well. For me, the work hits at bygone days employing strategies that often juxtapose objects, themes, in-jokes, and old tales, to bring them, sometimes disjointedly, as far up as possible to now.

An earlier work 'Kiss Me' has a playdough frog painted bronze on a flat mount with a little plaque with the words Kiss me engraved on it. It is not difficult to see where this idea comes from, and you may yawn. The sublimity for me comes with the absent word 'see'! When I think of the word SEE I always think of the very center position of now outside the five discriminating senses.

In Kiss Me there is an invitation. There is a hurdle, and a choice.

Ouroborus,'Dice caramel', tells its very own story, one centuries old and the other closer to this date.

Some thirty years ago, Dice candy, which consist of two caramel candies inside a tiny box in the design of a die, were all the rage. This was before TV animation, Playstation, and Nintendo took hold. Children would buy these treats, eat the candy and play with the die, after which due to the box's frailty throw what was left in the trash. Everyone appreciated the sharp and simple package design, and some still have a stash of these. They are relics of 'genius of design' that now live their life neatly stored in an empty child's room--somewhere. Sato made his own dice candy boxes and creates a wheel with them which I am inclined to think as a lucky wheel--a wheel where things go around and things come around. You can really take it how you like.

With 'Fossel for new Thought', and for some strange reason Henny Penny comes to mind, you have a small but brightly colored, perhaps conservatively dressed 'chook' looking at a piece of wrapped candy which has been placed on a page of a propped open book to a photograph of a work by post minimalist Felix Gonzalez-Torres, likely one of Sato's heros. But the book is not really just an art book. It's a trap. A traditional Japanese bird trap made of bamboo. Chook goes in and you put the string. We on the inside, holding, (think back to the cup) know what is going on, and can watch and laugh.

The craft of outsmarting a bird, especially one domesticated and in this case cannot fly, is not a craft too difficult to master.

Though, when it works you get a bird--if the bird buys in.

Obviously less birds buy in these days because you don't see a lot of these traps around much more. Chook probably buys in and gets caught--out smarted (by us). And, as said before, this was not really a hard thing to do.

First experiences are traumatic and a bird seldom gets a second chance, but Chook might as many who catch birds today do it less for the real thing and more for fun. So Chook will probably have a chance to wise up, and then, looking back sometime on at the stage with the candy, trap, and string, something else might happen.

This time round we are less eager to laugh, and more likely to find we are in a dilemma--one not unlike Chook was in the first time. This time round the question faces us 'Will we take it, or not?'.

We don't know what is going to happen. I mean the setup is the same but there are very different cards on the table.

To move away from tales and tables, chooks and cards, and to fumble into a more art voice, whatever that is, it might be interesting to pay attention to the book and page on which the candy rests, and then pull away and take in the structural workings of the trap. There are worlds within worlds, some already printed, and others yet to be.

With the multitudinous versions, twists and turns of henny penny stories out there, I was surprised to hear of one whose core message was to laugh with the error makers instead of laughing at them. You'll find it in 'The Flight of the Animals' in the Jataka Tales, a collection of early stories about the Buddha that date back to 500BC.

It happens.

ERROR is now at Gallery Twinspace until February 1st .1f Nakanoshim Garden Haites, 4-1-2 Tenma, Kitaku, Osaka, and

'Switchpoint' from March 13th till March 23rd. 1F 4-72-4 Honmachi, Kokubunji-shi, Tokyo.