Tomoko Takahashi
22 February – 10 April
www.serpentinegallery.org
Takahashi confutes notions of play and dis-play in a single installation
with over 7,600 salvaged objects arranged in playful disorder. It was the
result of an intensive period in which the artist lived in the gallery
space, burrowing and sorting like a mad inventor, as she wrestled with the
concepts of learning, work and the outdoors.
The south gallery elucidates the collaborative processes of the project.
Snapshots of the work in process, notes from the artist to technicians and
curators and vice versa, the printed guidelines for working at the
Serpentine, floor plans, timetables and other relevant documentation such as
photocopied pages of the Tomoko Takahashi Logbook, a computer printout
listing the objects collected and a colourful collage of flattened board
game boxes stapled to the wall.
It takes considerable skill to create convincing disorder in believable
aesthetic disarray. For me, the shuttered east gallery holds a thrilling
mystery. Motor parts, tyres, bicycle wheels, loops of tubing, Scalextric
sets mixed with innumerable electrical appliances, including sewing
machines, fridges, fans, computers and tape recorders are lit only by a
series of anglepoise lamps and flashing lights. Interesting parts reveal
themselves in the semi-darkness. Although there are clusters of similar
objects, they appear badly stacked rather than laid out to view.
In the west gallery, by contrast, everything appears too carefully arranged.
Somehow the awkwardness recalls a bad ethnographic display: a museum display
times an arty game equals some rather unconvincing groups of things. This is
the reverse of the north gallery, which presents an extraordinarily magical,
aesthetic composition, evoking Alice’s Wonderland seen through the looking
glass. Areas of floor patterning, created by accumulations of jigsaw pieces
or playing cards, Lego pieces or open children’s books are mini worlds.
Startling assemblages – like a giant dice penetrated by a large kitchen
knife – add a surrealist effect. Perhaps it is the orderly procession of
playing cards in Mondrian formation on the walls, or the dramatic wooden
staircase that terminates in a cluster of classroom chairs, the voice that
intermittently chants ‘hello’, ‘welcome’ and ‘press the button’ or the
chiming of Big Ben, but this room takes us somewhere else – into the world
of childhood fantasies, dreams and games.
Elizabeth Manchester