For two days only, Mujin-to Production in Koenji was renamed "Gallery Vagina". It’s surely not the most beautiful name for a gallery. On view was an exhibition by Chim Pom titled "Suterareta chinpo (dumped dick)", which definitely doesn't sound much better. And don't get me started on the artworks on display…

The walls of the tiny three-mat space of Mujin-to Production, or Gallery Vagina, were painted white. The room looked empty at first glance, but then I spotted a little hole in the front wall, from which a strange object was dangling down. After staring at it for a while, I noticed that it was moving from time to time. Everyone inside the gallery was smiling, either out of embarrassment or bewilderment. A member of the gallery staff admonished visitors not to touch the display while choking back a grin, to which someone in the audience promptly responded with a short blow on the "artwork". The following twitching movement triggered even more laughter…

What a silly exhibition… It’s so silly that one can only take it very easy. Exhibited in another room was a plate inscribed with the names of the members of the pop group SMAP, and although it was apparently about "Kusanagi Tsuyoshi’s return to the show biz", this one was again so silly that the theme became totally unimportant. Chim Pom member Mizuno Toshinori, who provided an "artwork" in the form of his body part, was standing more than nine hours a day in an unnatural pose on the other side of the wall, and his masochistic endurance would deserve respect, wasn't it all so incredibly silly. It’s illogical, indifferent, complete nonsense!

Chim Pom’s "Hiroshima!" show at the newly opened space "Vacant" in Ura-Harajuku last March was in my view a slightly unsatisfying exhibition. On display were the same works as planned for the cancelled exhibition in Hiroshima (see Out of Tokyo 198), so I was full of expectations when I went to see the show, but went home with the feeling of being tricked. The video documenting how the artists wrote the word "Pika!" into the sky above Hiroshima with a chartered airplane looked like nothing more than a record of a certain action, while the "Real Paper Cranes" that were part of the artwork, and the all too politically correct message of "peace", "love" and "happiness on earth" didn't seem to be organically linked to the video images. Leader Ushiro Ryuta had previously explained that "the airplane’s contrail itself wasn't the actual artwork, but only material for a video that was going to be produced later." However, in my opinion it would have been much easier to understand if they did make the contrail the actual artwork. At the risk of misunderstanding, I would say that the act, and the gradually vanishing condensation trail in the blue sky as a result thereof, looked movingly, even refreshingly beautiful. That beauty pungently highlighted the "gap between the peace-addicted reality" that the artists intended to express, and even though the work would have been fine with just that, the half-hearted inclusion of a foreign substance just killed it in my view.

Compared to that, "Suterareta chinpo" was, well, bang on the spot. Cynical, while at once utilizing the context of a white cube … I'm tempted to write, but in the case of this pure trash it’s perhaps a bit tasteless. But isn't such genuine nonsense where the origins of art, or artistic expression, lie in the first place? It reminds me of Ame-no-Uzume, a pioneering Japanese performer so to speak, who according to legend was "pulling out the nipples of her breasts, pushing down her skirt-string usque ad privates partes" (from "The Kojiki; Records of Ancient Matters") after Amaterasu hid from Ame-no-Iwato and plunged the world into complete darkness. However, the purpose of Ame-no-Uzume’s striptease was to lure the sun goddess out of the cave. Chim Pom don't seem to have a purpose whatsoever.

Back to "Hiroshima!" It is certainly not impossible to understand not only the exhibition at "Vacant", but all the fuss around it, including guerilla-like appearances across Hiroshima, as parts that make up the "artwork". Or better, seeing it like that is definitely more fun, and it actually makes much more sense. I think it’s rather close to Iepe Rubingh’s "work" that documents how he caused a major traffic jam and a huge chaos by sealing off a crowded intersection with a tape, then being of course arrested, taken into custody, and eventually released. Asked about this, Ushiro denies with a smile, but still I'm not sure. "Basically the same" (according to Ushiro) "Hiroshima!!" exhibition opens on 6/12 at NADiff a/p/a/r/t in Ebisu (through 6/18), so if you haven't seen it yet, here’s your chance.

Some contributors to the book "Naze Hiroshima no sora wo pika to saseteha ikenainoka" ("What’s wrong about a flash in the Hiroshima sky"; Chim Pom, edited by Abe Kenichi; Kawade shobo shinsha), a by-product (or maybe actually the main product?) of the "fuss" that includes among others "Out of Tokyo 198", complain about being assigned to write a text even before the artwork’s "completion". Artist Tanaka Koki writes the following. "For the mere cause of the 'fuss', this book includes texts that were written without seeing the finished work. […] It’s like cheating in a rock-paper-scissors game by seeing the opponent’s hand before putting your own hand out, so it just can't be a valid review of an artwork." But what if even the book is just another part of the artwork…?

One more thing about "Suterareta chinpo". I immediately thought of Robert Mapplethorpe’s "Man in Polyester Suit" and, in the realm of dance, Kim Itoh’s and Shirai Tsuyoshi’s stark naked performance of "Kinjiki". When asking the members of Chim Pom, none of them knew these works. I'm quite sure they don't know the full monty performance of Dada Kan (Itoi Kanji), Henri Maccheroni’s photographs of female genitals, or Hirakawa Toshinori’s display of real bodily waste at Tate Modern either.

I don't want to lament about that. Appropriation and reference to art history are things that can't be generalized that simply. In his solo exhibition that ended last week, Umeda Tetsuya was showing works that would have to be classified as "Dorkbot style" (see Out of Tokyo 114), and that were highly reminiscent of the Futurists, Jean Tinguely, or Fischli & Weiss ("The Way Things Go/Der Lauf der Dinge"), but according to Ota Hidenori of Ota Fine Arts, there "exists no art historical context." Anyway, the works are extremely interesting both visually and acoustically.

Is there something like timeless universality in the desire and methods of expression? Or do we have to consider that the influence (or what Richard Dawkins calls "memes") of previously active artists works also in an indirect way? Or maybe it’s the simple phenomenon that every age has its exhibitionists? Young contemporary creators do remain an interesting breed.