In the daily rush to get to class on time, to turn in homework when it's due or even take a shower before a night on the town, people often lose track of the passage of time and forget to take a couple of moments to meditate and reflect. The contemporary installation piece, "The Asian Shore," at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum provides visitors with the perfect environment to sit back and think.
The special exhibition is located in one small, rectangular room. Asian rugs dyed the blackest of blacks and crimson-red cover part of the floor. Three walls are white, and one is covered with drawings. The wall closest to the rest of the museum is dark ultramarine blue and sports a set of sliding 17th-century Japanese doors.
The artist behind this exhibition, Stefano Arienti, was the Gardner Museum's 2004 Artist-in-Residence. During his residency, he took a special interest in the museum's history, its Asian collection and its Chinese Room. These interests had a visible influence on his work and are especially noticeable in "The Asian Shore."
The Chinese Room was a special space in the museum dedicated to the Asian artifacts, Buddha sculptures and many other souvenirs that its founder, Isabella Gardner, purchased during her travels to Asia during the late 1800s. Unfortunately, most of the Chinese Room was sold in 1971, but the museum's archives still hold images of the room and its artifacts.
Arienti photocopied archival images of several tables and statues of Buddha. Then, using special techniques of wood burning and carbon transfer on paper, he created copies of these forgotten artifacts. The artist pinned up not only his drawings, but also the photocopies. The images repeat, but each piece of paper gives viewers a different perspective on each artifact. In most of the drawings, Arienti has reduced the Buddhas, tables and trinkets to their basic lines. Sometimes, specific detail is evident, but there are always at least consistent outlines of the objects' forms.
The artist made curious choices in displaying his drawings. For one thing, they are all touching each other and sometimes overlap to create four distinct rows. Even more interesting is the way the artist mounted them by pinning down only the upper edges of the white paper, leaving the bottom edges free to flutter up and down with passing winds. Perhaps the fluttering of the drawings is reminiscent of Japanese prayer slips or stickers. Whatever the meaning of the fluttering, it adds physical movement to an otherwise static room.
Upon entering the exhibition room, text on the wall invites viewers to take off their shoes and sit upon the black and red Asian rugs lining the floor. Sitting on the rugs immediately gives one the sense of meditation. Arienti had the rugs specially dyed, and it is interesting to note the different materials and patterns in each monochromatic rug. The minimalist ambiance created by the white walls and black and red rugs presents a sharp, edgy contrast to the faded gold and jade-green Japanese doors.
As one ponders the old images of three-dimensional objects and their two-dimensional reincarnations, one notices the incredible silence in the room relative to the hustle and bustle of the rest of the museum. It seems as if the room has become a sanctuary for quiet reflection against the noise of the caf?© and gift shop and the loud conversations of passing visitors.
The Japanese sliding doors are a further testament to the idea of a meditation room. Usually hung in another part of the museum, the artist had them relocated so that viewers could see the backs of the doors, a view otherwise unseen. As one reflects on the exhibit, the doors seem to lead back to the complex, vibrant and fast-paced world outside, and the installation more than ever becomes an escape from that world.
In "The Asian Shore," Stefano has recreated his own version of Gardner's Chinese Room, a place where older symbols of tranquility complement the contemporary decoration of the room. The result is a sanctuary from our busy lives, an opportunity to let time pass and a chance to ponder the passage of time.
The exhibition is aptly titled. In its pamphlet the artist declares, "[It] is a shore of arrivals and departure, inhabited by the undertow of time, where one can really take a rest."
