The Boston Institute for Contemporary Art is continuing its "Momentum" series of one-artist exhibitions with a room-size installation, "Space House," by Misaki Kawai. The artist, born in Osaka, Japan in 1978, has a unique aesthetic comprised of a rock 'n' roll blend of pop, do-it-yourself craft and a healthy sense of humor.
Her show at the ICA is essentially one piece, an expansive room-filling installation that spirals out in tendrils. Why "Space House?" The installation is a neon-colored view of the future of our homes, one artist's vision of what could be the dwellings of tomorrow: hallucinatory, enormously dynamic multi-chambered constructions where we live out our dreams.
What makes this installation so special is Kawai's playfulness and fearless exploration of things that could be considered too comic, too childlike or just too silly for high art. Her "Space House" is bombastic and wildly imaginative; the piece is set against walls painted in slapdash, jagged stripes of neon yellows, greens and pinks that set the stage for her sculpture. The sculpture itself is impossible to avoid in the room, it confronts viewers face to face.
All of a sudden, a strange box comes to eye level, with a hole just wide enough to look inside. What do you see? Anything from John Lennon in a hot tub watching a (working) television to a tiny artist's studio, the walls covered in miniature drawings. The joy of "Space House" is in its process of discovery: each new section brings new surprises, each and every one hand-created by Kawai in immaculate detail. It makes one reconsider just how much we create our own interior worlds, just as Misaki Kawai has created hers.
"Space House" is striking both in its size and its depth. On one level, the viewers confront the work physically as it bars and shapes their path walking around the exhibition room. Next, viewers are essentially voyeurs to the action in the piece as they are intruding on someone else's house, one that they are not a part of. Kawai's dream is a self-sustaining one; it does not need the validation of the viewer to make it any less magical. The installation almost seems to have grown in the space itself, it is autonomous, an organic work instead of a static object. Misaki Kawai's characters seem perfectly happy to fly around in their jet scooters, trailing clouds of puffy cotton smoke, with or without an audience.
On the micro level, "Space House" is just as impressive as it is as a whole. Kawai's choices to use handmade, almost kitsch craft projects to build her installation are particularly striking. This decision probably developed as a result of her parents' influence: her mother made clothes and her father was an architect, coming through in her well-articulated sense of space and construction. Her characters are made up of cotton balls, photo cut-outs and miniature clothes; they seem like dolls from a child's playhouse but magnified, intensified and imbued with vivacious life. Their textures and rough, handmade aesthetic bring to mind the endless creativity of childhood, without boundaries and without worries.
This is not to say her work is not engaged with the world around it. Her vision of the future as a trippy, vibrant place where we ride around on jet scooters between floating houses is not unlike a hippie commune, or at least a place where everyone is completely free to express themselves. Though Kawai lives and works in New York, her home country of Japan has only recently been truly coming into its own in the global contemporary art scene. Artists like Takashi Murakami and Misaki Kawai have overcome the old Japanese prejudice against the artistic avant-garde to cater to younger generations. Instead of being closemouthed, scared to truly rebel or be heretical, Kawai shouts.
Misaki Kawai's "Space House" is by no means quiet. It is physically confrontational, garish, bright and loud. It projects into the space around it, growing out in tendrils. The viewing experience is echoed in the piece itself: walking around the sculpture is like one of the roller coaster jet rides the artist has constructed. There is never a dull moment and each turn brings a new surprise.
