Rehema Barber: Artist Lecture

This was a pretty interesting lecture, and I'm glad I went. Rehema Barber (I may have spelled her name wrong) is faculty at MCA teaching art history. This lecture was about a grant/program she was given to go and experience Japanese contemporary art. It was on the whole a little bit long but also not rigid and stoic like  many lectures are.


She first went over a piece by Kenji Yanobe, called "Sun Child" This one really caught my eye out of a lot of the art she showed:

This is a reactionary piece against the earthquake that really devastated parts of Japan recently, which she talked about saying: "The earthquake changed the way artists framed their work" Which was interesting to me- art reacting to the climate and enviroment that it is produced in. What if we did this and made art that sucked up CO2 fumes?


Another thing that caught my eye was a permanent work at the 21st century museum in Kanazawa:

The architecture of the muesum itself is a work of art- it's basically all windows except for the inner room and is open and free to the public except for the galleries inside. It's really enforcing a sense of community and allowing anyone to enter from all sides. But this work really interested me:

 Leandro Erlich

It's really surreal and interactive to me- basically a pane of glass slices the top of the pool and between the pane is water that is circulated. This level of simplicity and yet interactivity and surrealism is really genius. 

Another standout piece is this jazz musician who wanted to meld art and music- so he played a piano that was on fire;

Yosuke Yamashita

He's done this before but the video he did before of it was in very bad quality. He succeeded in playing the piano as long as possible until the strings melted and no sound could be played- even at the expense his own health.