A window, looking out or in, playfully fitted with a white lace curtain, framed by pastel colors, the profile of a lyre, the musical instrument of classical Greece, cropped on one side, while on the other the frame runs into a dark curling form, recalling a piece of heavy fabric. This multi-layered little artwork, somewhere between painting and sculpture, is titled The moon was tilted No.7 (Golden-Sandalled Dawn) and the first piece in the exhibition From the Boat Drifting Past a Forest of Stars by the artist Natsuki Oshiro.
The title as well as the initial artwork refer both to the ancient Greek poetess Sappho and to Japanese poetry. At the same time, the work sets the tone for the entire show in two respects: tone in the sense of hue or shade for Natsuki Oshiro works in her very own palette, which lends visual coherence to the exhibition. But tone also in the sense of pitch, the narrative voice, for the artist translates her interest in poetry into a visual language, finding form in murals, wood sculptures and textiles. Taken together, these aspects result in a spatial and conceptual Gesamtkunstwerk through which the visitors move.
The tender colors of light blue, light yellow, rose and light green lead from the first artwork at the entrance into a space in which the walls are covered in extensive ornamental forms. Palm-sized plaster discs are scattered across the floor. They are emblematic for the stars and the wide night sky that is traversed by the moon like a boat floating on water. This poetic image can be found in the poems of Sappho as well as the poetry of Man’yōshū (万葉集), the earliest surviving anthology of poetry from the seventh century. It is the central theme of the exhibition.
Standing upright in this space, the work titled The boat of the moon drifts into a forest of stars reveals simple, abstract wave patterns on the sides. Through the method of mitate (見立て) materials and concepts are connected and related to each other symbolically. Literally, mitate means “to see something as something else” or “to relate something to something else”. This playful method of imagination and free association is found, for instance, in the artform of Japanese gardening where rocks and sand may represent water and waves.
The central wall dividing the exhibition space has a window through which visitors can look. “Is it possible to see the same landscape as people did in times long past?”, the artist asked herself while reading Greek and Japanese poetry. During her residence in Berlin, she found this thought again in the work of the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, who writes in his poem
Moon, moonshine and in particular the shadow bright moonlight sometimes casts in a dark night were the inspiration for two further works by the artist, who was born in the megalopolis that is Tokyo. The moon is also a natural phenomenon that is present and often cited in the poetry of Rilke, Sappho and the Manyoshu.
Common to all three poetic traditions is the contemplation of nature, which equally forms the basis of the exhibition From the Boat Drifting Past a Forest of Stars. A tranquil, poetic show asking how much time and space mythos, silent contemplation of nature as sense experience are afforded within the big cities of this world.
Text: Nora Wölfing