http://www.frieze.com/shows/review/chim_pom/

Go

20 captures
7 Oct 2008 - 31 Jul 2016

FriezeFrieze Magazine
Frieze Art Fair
Frieze FoundationWhy?
RegisterLog In
Archive
Blog
CommentShows
Subscribe
Advertise
AboutContact
Vacancies
SearchCurrent Shows
Chim ↑ Pom

About this review

Mujin­to Production, Tokyo, Japan

Published on 02/10/08
by Edan Corkill

image

Print this review
Email this review

Previous Shows in thiscity
Emily Kame Kngwarreye
Pipilotti Rist
Space for Your Future:
Recombining the DNA of Artand Design

Chim ↑ Pom, Saya mau perigi ke TPA (2008), installation
shot. © 2008 Chim ↑ Pom. Courtesy of Mujin­toProduction, Tokyo
If art is going to include an element of shock, then it cant bethe type that just wears off with repeated viewings. The

Other Articles by EdanCorkill
Emily Kame Kngwarreye
Shows
Goth: Reality of the Departed
World Shows
Space for Your Future:provocative must also be evocative – enough to spark fire­cracker explosions of thoughts and insights, where theRecombining the DNA of Art
and Design Shows

inconceivable suddenly becomes incontrovertible. Insights
like: mans best friend is not the dog, but the rat! The ThirdWorld is living off the trash of the First! The weapons offormer despots should be drafted into a war against financial
inequality!
Or: this bunch of pricks might just save Japanesecontemporary art!
OK, I take that last one back. A literal translation of Chim ↑Pom, the name of a six­person artist group whose third solo
exhibition in Tokyo in as many months is now at Mujin­toProduction, probably wouldnt be as coarse as that. Penis,
perhaps, or something more cute, maybe ­ like pecker orwilly. The point is that in a local art scene long verging on theyawn side of staid, even thats enough to make these guys
sound immediately fresh.
Chim ↑ Pom formed in 2005 – a collection of wandering art
graduate asteroids pulled into orbit around slacker art star,
Makoto Aida. Basically we met each other during drinking
sessions with Aida, member Yasutaka Hayashi explained tome a few months ago. Ellie, the groups only woman (orgyaru – gal – as she says in the lingo of her peroxide­and­dark­makeup generation), had modeled for Aidas paintings.
The groups leader, though, is Ryuta Ushiro. It was he whoexplained the concept behind their controversial exhibition
two months ago at Hiromi Yoshii gallery. The only thing rats,
crows and humans have in common is garbage, heannounced, as if that totally explained why we were peering
through a one­way mirror into a small concrete room inwhich a rat, a crow and a human (Toshinori Mizuno, one of
the groups members), were about to spend two weeks living
off trash.
After two weeks, of course, the crow had died, but the others
had pulled through, apparently having formed some kind of
Free Trade Agreement between ground­hugging scavengers.
Accompanying that performance/installation, Becoming
friend, eating each other or falling down together (2008),
there was a video documenting how the crow had been
rescued in a midnight raid on one of the traps installed in themetropolis by the famously anti­crow Tokyo Governor,
Shintaro Ishihara. We took your crows! the artists can beseen scrawling on a sign outside, adding the tag C ↑Shepherd and jokingly aligning themselves with Japans
environmentalist tormentor, Paul Watson.
In the current exhibition, Chim ↑ Pom are showing workthat they made during a recent trip to Bali alongside othernew work. The Bali piece, Saya mau perigi ke TPA (Take meto the garbage disposal plant, 2008), includes a video
showing Ellie in the guise of a cashed­up bimbo chick tourist
cavorting in a helicopter above a giant garbage tip. As she
dumps junk from about 200 meters up, a local community ofrecyclers sifts through the refuse below. Japanese dropping

RSS Feeds
Get the Universal feed, or theCurrent Shows feed to be
updated of new reviews inthis section.

garbage on their poorer Asian neighbours?! Theoffensiveness is only just outweighed by the knowledge thatthe artists primary target isnt the Indonesians, but their own,unthinking countrymen.
image

Chim ↑ Pom, Feelin like the guys make me hot 02 (2008),
C­print, DVD. © 2008 Chim ↑ Pom. Courtesy of Mujin­toProduction, TokyoChim ↑ Pom produces work at a pace that only a six­persongroup could manage. In just three years they have built up amind­boggling oeuvre that includes taxidermied rats,
bleached and dyed bright yellow to resemble the video gamecharacter Pikachu, a biennale guerrilla performance held at
the Tokyo Disney Resorts version of Venice, the mustering ofhundreds of wild crows to the National Diet Building inTokyo, the destruction of Louis Vuitton handbags in
Cambodia using unexploded landmines, and Hard Rock Cafésigns drawn with kerosene­hoses and lighters (one of the newworks in the current show).
Where its all heading is anybodys guess; what it tells us about
Japan is crystal clear. Shock like that of confronting a livecrow in a gallery hasnt figured in Japanese art since the late1960s, when, to a backdrop of student and left­wing riots, Hi­Red Center donned lab coats and started polishing thesidewalks with toothbrushes. The prosperity and peace of the80s and 90s steered local artists towards a predominantly
refined academicism. Nowadays, with Chinas emergence as ageopolitical power, the pension scandal (millions of records
were lost) and a spate of random stabbing crimes, cracks
have appeared in the nations veneer of confident affluence.
All of a sudden satire, cynicism and subversion are back on
the table, and Chim ↑ Pom arent wasting a second.
Edan Corkill

Responses
There are no responses yet for this article.

Add a Response
Sorry, only subscribers and registered users may leave
responses. Please log in or register.
Please Login
Username
Password

Forgot Password
Register

Listings October 2008
Download the October 2008 exhibition listings from the latest issue (PDF)

Subscribe to frieze
Receive frieze magazine to your door, from only £29 for 8 issues a year.

Podcasts
Cultural Cartography: Roni Horn ­ Added on 13/10/07
Roni Horn presents a keynote lecture exploring ideas of site­ specificity and seriality

Frieze Mailing List
For news from Frieze join the mailing list
Name:Email:Publications
Frieze Art Fair Yearbook 2008­9UK £19.95. The latest edition of the Frieze Art Fair Yearbook

Podcasts
The Expanded Gallery: Mass Forms for Private Consumption ­ Added on 13/10/07
What cultural value do industrial design, graphics and film bring to the spaces of the gallery and the museum?

Frieze 81 Rivington Street, London EC2A 3AY, UK, +44 (0) 20 3372 6111 info@frieze.com www.frieze.com
Back to Top ↑Site by Erskine Design