Flick the switch and splaT!
Press the surface again and travel different conundrums where simple thoughts repeat as they embed [amplifying what is] and [playing what is not].

Asako Tanaka with her second exhibition at Nomart plays two zones. One, entitled 'LOFT', has the ground floor space set up with intercrossed partitions; 'X's' arranged so it is difficult to take in more than one or two works at a given time. It is convenient for Ms. Tanaka. And it is a simple strategy to slow the work down.

Upstairs of 'LOFT' you'll find a plexiglas box with lid next to it placed on a wooden bench. In the box are a hundred or so sheets.The visitor is invited to go through these at their own leisure, as they would with a book, or as if going through someone's image file and keeps you from getting too hung up about the status of the work as art. It is a relaxed engagement, one which encourages a mild departure from outside daily reality even though many of the objects, either transferred onto photographic emulsion or born through lithographic process, are just that -images, or parts, suggestions of the everyday.

In the second zone of Nomart, 'CUBE', the slow unraveling of [seeing] works through an acclimation of low and filtered light, which over time, proffers a different experience of intimacy and the emergent, one which works through a conflict of the senses - one of suffocation and the other, a starvation, eventually pulling you in--to the other-world of the everyday.
There looks to be, in the way of looking, a difference between the [everyday], which Tanaka finds so fascinating, and the [everyday as time]. And the differences may not be so straightforward as expected. I tend to see the [everyday] in two ways. And while both can get you lost, only one is going to make you late.
The first way involves the movement of time in a particularly [clock frame]. And a 'I'm late, I need to get there on time!' briefly describes the first. There are certain distances to travel, which have already been identified. And all you need to do is get there. Though, to describe the second way, Tanaka's [everyday], is a little more difficult. This [second way] rarely stays in the clock frame of [I'm late], and has no real distance, thus no real time. The second way, more often than not, is lost of time, or has no space to travel.
It is misleading to think 'I'm late' actually means you out of time. Just as it is absurd to think you have time to fill when you get somewhere before time. [I'm early'] belongs to the same clock. Late or early you are still in the same point of time, just sometimes not in the right place, or not at the right time. So the running late, running early, and the running on time, are all within the hours of the everyday, but as time, each is more interested in the starting points and destinations and less with [on the way].
Of course [time is everything], except when something holds up time - people, or things, or such. The [everyday as time], as it relates to 'things' bamboozles things into becoming markers. They become not things of themselves but points in time, much like the time event, except not quite. An object looks to be filled with more space than time is tolerant of, especially when the object's now main purpose is that of a 'mere' marker and just something to be reached or passed. As a marker, a dot, space comes to represent the superfluous, something necessary in the mind to overcome. Though, space remains the problem of time. It just won't go away.
As the riders of time, we have this constant battle with space, whether it is filled in with objects or just the distance between two things, places or people. Via the construction of the 'marker', time has eliminated much of the space. What remains important for time is the moving from one super dot to the next super dot.

With Asako's particular frame: Her focus seems inscribed deep somewhere in the realm of a mundane - a zone, which often almost always gets buried in the race for time in the conquering of space.
A work entitled [saucer/cup] has a white background and holds a just discernable plain white cup and saucer. The composition has, in Western terms, a 'contrapposto' balance, except it's just a cup which was most likely, hastily, placed on the saucer.
Or, differently! Was it a [haste that placed the top squarely on the bottom], and all it took Tanaka was a slight effort to make it sit right? With the ever so faint shift, everything looks good--and much, much better. It makes me think about how cups and saucers fit different cultures, and thanks to Tanaka's [look] I can see how it all fits in Japan--quite, quite differently.
As empty and tilted a [cup/saucer] is not without air.

Being well versed in, and utilizing the Japanese tradition of presenting bulky space as flat and by using the photographic image or simple lithograph, Tanaka helps us focus in on her flow. It is the start. Yet there are added things to consider. Asako Tanaka seems to be asking for more time for the work while the focus looks to be won by space, manipulating space to overwhelm the speed of time, by restricting space for ground floor LOFT, relaxing it for upstairs, and extending the distance low light needs to travel in 'CUBE'. These all involve time, (that's life), except it is space that is strategically disruptive of time, to steady it, extend it, and not the other way round. Yet the after-effects, what continues, is not physical at all. This over-flow takes up nothing of anything--neither space nor time. Relate this back to the flat, and I think you can get closer to the work after all.
[mono-orange] is an image of an outmoded orange blender with fruit inside of the same color, which stands with cord, again of the same color, extended ready for the zap.
The take is a commercial shot, zero background, as with the cup, though, because of the strong color, the image grows pregnant. The orange of the solid plastic base and the above more varied hues within the gaps, transparencies between the fruit, perfectly readies the sales. It catches! Yet it is caught without a final punch. What's it for?
It may be easy to understand [mono-orange] as something humorous. I jumped at the word and image as a sly on diversity, then a play on art history. But then I thought maybe it's not humor at play after all, and the title just refers to what is there. And what is there is there to tease the mind into performing its own acrobatics. It is true that mind is born without a switch to turn it off. And often mine only rests when completely exhausted. And when this happens there is often a brief nothing of silence.

You can see the [mono - orange] best on the ground floor of 'LOFT' up on one of the faces of the 'X's'. And for Asako it is her favorite work in the show. You can hear the engine running. But it slips off the rails. It dandies and swings off the loopy loop, and, best of all, triggers what is not there.