Have We Met? includes work from Indonesia, India, Thailand, and Japan. It's meant to be a collaborative, or a connective, but also comes across as a 'whatever', possibly generating another program, something for the unspoken, an inconspicuous dialogue. Perhaps at the heart there is another heart, one that is both surgical and device.

Have We Met? marks and incisions, mistakes and odd choices are the remnants of the elucidations, selections, of four curators: (one from each country) who met and who after, mostly via email, continued to fill ideas with artists into a show. Operation Ether put the show mostly together so where there is some mighty odd calls I just let it go as 'things happen' and if there is a clang then clang it is. Reality is not necessarily always working just to fit.

At The Japan Foundation Forum the work on view actually has no immediate collaborative feel. Most of the stuff moved and what did not for my money suffered a bit. The idea that a lot of the work uses FUN and humor--well most art I see coming out of Asia, the world, which is young and fresh, does that. And some of the art in this show was absent of a laugh. So I don't actually know how that gets worked out. Let's say, most of the stuff felt good, put a smile on your face; some offered a bit of wonderment.

Have We Met? meets the visitor with a bunch of small metal teapots on legs. When I visited these were bunched up silently shiny and demure to a wall. I wondered what would make them start. But then I lost interest.

I was lured to a room offside whose entrance bore colored dangling strips wafting funky restaurant style. The sound was something you'd likely get at a cool hideout restaurant in some part of Asia--local but slightly adrift. Brushing past the strips I met with a DVD with a white Barbie wiggling to sound, song, and landscape. I noted beware of Barbie's skin (a little tired) as it matched my own. Karaoke room: A touch of Japan, too. I could follow the song at least in two ways I guess, except I lacked the language skill. A slapdash oil painting stretched to the wall suggested something lost and replaced, a state of temporal disharmony; though appeal continued to dither away. Sigit Pius from Indonesia created the installation

'Ahoy' I hear the teapots through the dingle dangles. I could finally witness these things alive some even trotting away from the pack to topple over-a chew. Thanks galley attendant! Thai artist Porntaweesak Rimsakul's live metal robots can have tea with me anytime.

A bell rang! It rang again. The same assistant, who had rung the bell, and who had (must have) moved away from the site, reproached.
He delivered the message ' You can ring the bell.'
I did, but it didn't sound too proficient. I practiced pulling on dangling plastic legs of dolls of various complexions.
There was a bunch of these bells and in a semi circle TV monitors had different images noticeably heartlands of Asia though of such poor visual quality who could really tell. The assistant came over again. He told me that inside the bell is a tiny camera. And when friend and I got down and looked up into these bells, yeah, tiny photographic panoramic images pasted onto the inside, that's where the images on the monitors came from. Ding and the images move on the monitors.Wit Pimkanchanapong, from Thailand, was in charge of this.

Pimkanchanapong also had more stills on a wall. These were twitching on a loop. Life certainly is a trick. Simple, with breath and beauty, family shots offer the very best of the low-end side of technology. There was Dad hosing the garden forever with nothing getting wet. Mom was out with the dogs, so pleased to see her. And a maid was at work. Each image bore the signature of eternality, intimacy, distance and vibrancy to the tune of Wee, though each with a different service.

I never laughed once at a plain A4 piece of paper as it serves the higher spirit. Kobayashi Youko is now quite famous for her simple device of a high column boxed plexi-glass and printer. As a printer device releases the paper exactly over the open end of the plexi-tower a single sheet of paper starts it's decline suspended beautifully with nothing but the air and the pressure created by the flight down and the fit. OK I did laugh a half an hour later when I saw that a young women hadn't moved--obviously besotted by the stupendous awakening that comes from the simplest things when set right.

Krishnaraj Chonat's fake peal covered couch visually didn't do too much for me but I wanted, it wanted, begged, to be touched. Boo Boo! This is not one of the things that you can get too close to, I was gently told. Shame, I could have learnt to appreciate what the artist was saying. Chonat works in Bangalore, India.

Sawa Hiraki's tiny screens of even tinier Jumbo jets weeing around and through his London flat spoke formally and tenderly of a place you’ll never meet: deep inside his head.

Ping pong and pros and cons of eating with hands or fork and knife was a laugh and played in a manner of to the tune that identity really is an impossible thing to ping pong in search of a winner. In the game Kian Subbaiah plays himself and gave equally gooey spins on both eating practices. Smart!

I think Hitchcock would have liked Japanese returnee Mori Hiraharu's The Office with its tension. Nothing much happens or was ever going to happen. Certainly light moved and a woman at a desk face rippled and lapped just a little. Everything else looked busy dead still, and some other highlights that you should meet.
Another work by Mori raised a question on a small flat screen. A question mark on a balloon in the sky was held from roaming off by different people--not quite sure if he just met them in the park. The question is seemingly asking a question about what we do without a why and what we do with a why. Personally I never get to the park enough. If someone paid me or gave me food likely I'd hold the question if it'd help.

Anant Joshi’s grand set of small ceramics twinkled through light and whose groups and still games are somehow creating LIFE and a city in the win/lose pace of it, again something very small, lots of light; heady ideas.

There is more.

The exhibition ends January 30th. Get there! You may not be rolling in stitches, but there is funny. More, the work just feels good. Have We Met? The question forever looms above if someone is willing to hold.

Have We Met? The Japan Foundation Forum December 11, 2004 -- January 30, 2005.

text credits brent hallard 2004~05