SCAI the Bathhouse is an art gallery/ exhibition space repurposed from its previous life as a sento (Japanese public bathhouse).  Perhaps due to this origin, there is an intimacy to the smallness of the venue. A viewer walks right past the entrance and steps immediately into a square- shaped space.  The compactness of the venue permits an immediate visual and sensory confrontation with the artworks, intentionally positioned in a scattered fashion on the floor of the gallery.

Nobuko Tsuchiya has engineered a series of mixed media works, resembling archaeological relics collected from a galactic expedition. The title of the exhibition, “30 ways to go to the moon” has a creative playfulness, pointing to the alien mindscape the art embodies. The malformed nature of the objects lends to a repugnancy associated with encountering something alien. There is a dawning sense of the objects being devoid of oxygenated life (life as we know on planet Earth) conjuring impressions of a cold, unforgiving, barren and hostile landscape.

Yet, unmistakable signs of human activity lie in the title of each artwork. Titles such as Ice cream caldera or Micro space surfing ascribe a familiarity to the work, a link to a comfortable routine. The ways in which the objects are situated bring to mind furniture arranged in a home. Along with the use of material like cotton wool, the comfortable familiarity of home is juxtaposed against the skin crawling effect of an alien encounter.

The experience in viewing the artwork is thus a conscious stepping through of expectations. If the viewer can will himself to mentally stride past initial feelings of recoil, he might just perceive something recognizable.

When 29 May – 14 July 2018
Where SCAI the Bathhouse
What Mixed media installation titled “30 ways to go to the moon”
Artist Nobuko Tsuchiya