Science meets satire

Friday, Aug. 25, 2006 | 7:23 a.m.

What: "Japanese Art Will Entertain You!!"

Where: Donna Beam Fine Art Gallery, UNLV's Ham Fine Arts Building

When: Through Sept. 16

Reception: 7 p.m. Sept. 8

Information: 895-3893

Satoru Tamura steps onto a scale, strips and begins drinking tea through a long plastic tube. The naked artist drinks until his weight is exactly "100 Kilograms," which is also the title of the short video capturing the performance.

To better understand Tamura's work, it helps to know that he studied media, science and art at the University of Tsukuba in an area of Japan known for its science and research institutes.

And his weight theme carries over to his small figurative metal sculptures drilled with tiny precise holes to attain a certain weight. There is "100 Gram Judo" and "300 Gram Dancer," among others. "One Kilogram Rabbit" actually had weight added.

It's that approach that made him a prime candidate for "Japanese Art Will Entertain You!!" - an exhibit at UNLV's Donna Beam Fine Art Gallery. The exhibit features the work of five top Japanese artists who employ similar styles that incorporate science, technology and humor.

Nowhere is humor more prominent than in Nobumichi Tosa's video presentation of his 26 Nonsense Machines: technologically complicated industrial devices that are used to complete otherwise simple activities.

These include a fish basher that doubles as a fish coffin, a carp-shaped manual rhythm machine and a backpack-winged musical device that operates as an electronic finger snapper. The art doubles as products for sale, and the commerce becomes part of the art.

The video's deadpan educational narration takes viewers on a satirically entertaining journey into the world of these machines, which all incorporate a fish motif - because Tosa, aka Maywa Denki, views the world in the same way a fish looks out of its bowl.

As the video shows a tractorlike vehicle, operated by a fish swimming in a tank with sensors, the narrator explains, "Of course we cannot guess where it will go because it is entirely up to the fish."

A goldfish, covered in ink, flops tragically across Japanese paper - making its final mark. Viewers are shown a collection of these final live fish works and are told: "As each fish lives a different lifestyle, the ways they die are also different."

Viewers also witness the first novel "typed by a fish" and are encouraged by the narrator: "Who knows, maybe inside your head is a nonsense machine waiting to happen."

Although all of the works are thoughtful and clever, Tosa's video is probably the most intriguing and intelligent piece .

The show's curator, Sush Machida Gaikotsu, a Las Vegas artist, says he created the exhibit to focus on humor and entertainment.

"In the art world, the term 'entertainment' is kind of taboo," he says. "A lot of people don't want to use it. I like the challenge."

Even artist Taro Shinoda's imaginary worlds, explored in watercolor, can draw a smile. His two paintings in the exhibit are renditions of the type of large sculptures for which he is known. For example, one painting shows a couple lounging above a pool-blue body of water - elevated by industrial equipment so they're not actually floating nor touching the water.

Rockin' Jelly Bean, a Kyoto artist famous for his album covers and movie posters, shows a different side of himself in this exhibit by balancing his fluorescent silk-screen prints with three ink paintings and two drawings made exclusively for the show.

The ink paintings and drawings were inspired by 18th-century shunga, or erotic pictures. Jelly Bean's three silk screens in the exhibit feature female superhero action figures - otherworldly, muscular, yet voluptuous.

Ken Hamazaki is famous for his obsession with the color red. He wears red clothes, red shoes, red frames for his sunglasses. He rides a red bicycle and has a red gallery. His "Manne Kenpis," an ink on Japanese scroll paper, portrays the silhouette of a man urinating - a take on the Belgian sculpture of a young boy. The man's form is created by tiny repetitive patterns that can also be seen in Hamazaki's zodiac animals etched on clear plastic and displayed across a red background.

Similar to the other artists, Hamazaki creates his work for visual pleasure, rather than statement, Gaikotsu says.

The curator, whose recent show at Western Project in Culver City, Calif., drew a favorable review in the Los Angeles Times, describes the UNLV exhibition as cool, elegant and youthful.

"It really reflects contemporary Japanese culture."