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Kevin Ei-Ichi deForest Front Gallery December 7 - January 20, 2001 |
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Never the Twain Shall Meet
We arrived in Japan (specifically Kyoto) for the long haul... long enough
anyway - Kevin for a year and a half, and I for a year. Out of that time and place, objects, texts, positions were produced, by me, the reluctant English teacher, and by Kevin, the enthusiastic hybrid and critical observer, some of which are being exhibited now. All of these structures and presences are inextricably linked back to an engagement with constantly shifting cultural terrain; Japan was oddly and terrifyingly familiar in the worst ways, and yet reassuringly unlike at closer inspection.
The confusion is rooted in geographical ambiguity. So what was I - what were we - to make of such a place, a place which carefully wrapped itself within layers of cliches easily and willingly digested by foreigners? What were we to make of the soft and brittle recorded babble of women's voices announcing every bus stop, every subway station, every elevator floor, every train arrival, mechanically offering the same deadening details at each repetition (don't forget your belongings, be careful of the doors, thank you very much, have a good day)? What were we to make of the fait accompli of official Japanese culture, the selective histories and the plastic food, seemingly designed to appeal to foreigners' sense of comfort and desire for reassurance? The most immediately recognizable appropriations of an out-of-time Western culture - rockabilly fashions, and the happy housewives in commercials dressed in pastel dresses, matching pumps and aprons - remained the most absolutely opaque.
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And yet, certain disruptions brought me down to earth, broke the loops of hysterical repetition and brought me back to facing something of Japan in its geographical singularity. For instance, we lived out every day of our stay at home with the unequivocal fact of being on a floor, not propped two feet above it on an artificial second level of chairs, tables, desks, and counters. That is, not being on the ground, but on a floor which was its own panelled structure and covered with bound rice straw. In our case, our only living space was this floor, a raft in the middle of the ocean from which everything was cleared away, the futons rolled into corners during the days. (Or less ideally, a raft covered with the detritus of living because there is nowhere in these tiny spaces with cardboard walls to clear anything away. It was a relief for me to see the odd photo of a Japanese living in chaos in one of these small apartments. "That's how it really is!")
 And another moment, something I never got over, never understood - the dissembling appearance of traditional wooden Japanese houses. When I looked, where was I to look? Where was the entrance, where should my eye go next, how could I contain the whole with my gaze? The wealthy build the most lavish houses, and at the same time, the least visible from public view. This fact, finally, pulled away from the known, from a European tradition of architectural visual excess based on symmetry, overabundance, and baroque presence, where the entrance is always clearly marked. Kevin has twisted his everyday Kyoto world of food, shelter and sex into this body of work. It's all there, the flooring and the disco, the manga explosions and the croaking of frogs. But unlike me, he is motivated in his processing, I suspect, by a baffling and amorphous need. Because he is in that rice somewhere. We're both looking for him. Bertie Mandelblatt
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Top Image: Kevin Ei-Ichi deForest Island of Change (Onnanokonohito), 1998 straw, cloth on styrofoam, board 5 x 258 x 258 cm photo: Brett Lyons
Right Image: Kevin Ei-Ichi deForest
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Kevin Ei-Ichi deForest was born in Winnipeg in 1962. Studies in Winnipeg (B.F.A, University of Manitoba 1986), Montreal (M.F.A, Concordia University, 1994) with residencies in Banff (Banff Centre 1986-1987), Amsterdam (Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, 1989-1991) and Kyoto (Seika Daigaku 1997-1999). He has shown individually in Canada and Holland, with group shows also in the United States, Mexico, Germany and Japan. In addition he has received numerous international grants and awards. Lives and works in Montreal. Bertie Mandelblatt is a reference librarian at McGill University and is currently completing an M.A. in Media Studies at Concordia University, Montreal. |
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