Standing on a boardwalk in semi-darkness over an endless sea of clear balloons, visitors to the "JUKAI: an architectural environment" installation may forget they are in the cramped rooms of the List Art Center's David Winton Bell Gallery. This is exactly the effect Japanese artist Yumi Kori said she hoped for when she converted the gallery into JUKAI - meaning "sea of trees" in Japanese.
"I wanted to transform (the) space into a space with no boundaries," said Kori, who used light and sound to create JUKAI's oceanic setting.
Visitors enter the installation in small groups, and then travel through a series of curtains designed to keep the exhibit space in darkness. Once inside, they find themselves on a small wooden deck, where they can linger over the reflective surfaces, ambient woodland sounds, and columns of blue light that recede into the darkness. The balloons froth like bubbles around the deck, reflecting the light from the columns and obscuring the rest of the space. The forest and ocean-like qualities foster a sense of peace with the viewer and invite contemplation.
In developing this installation, Kori said she envisioned the space as a deep, disorienting forest, through which one can catch glimpses of more space beyond the trees. Though that is her interpretation, she said she hopes visitors to the gallery will develop their own way of viewing the forest and realize that even the smallest space can be vast and limitless, depending on one's perception.
Although bird and insect noises can occasionally be distinguished among the sounds, the setting of JUKAI is more reminiscent of a dock at night. The blue lights reflect infinitely in the endless sea of balloons like starlight on waves. Kori's installation may be inspired from personal recollections, as well as natural settings, but her viewers will be able to infuse her work with their own associations.
In the coming month, curious visitors and weary students alike will find the exhibit's environment a welcoming place to sit or walk to escape the stresses of the outside world. The combination of light, sound and space engage the viewers senses to bring a feeling of the natural world to a confined, windowless room.
"Japan is so small - (we) always have to deal with that kind of trick," Kori said.
Kori, who teaches Japanese architecture at Barnard College, also works as an installation artist and architect out of Tokyo and New York. Previously, she has lectured at the Parsons School for Design and Yale University's School of Art and Architecture. Before completing her graduate degree in architecture from Columbia University, she studied music, theater, and architecture in Japan.
The sound installation accompanying Kori's work,developed by Austrian sound artist Bernhard Gal, incorporates abstract water and woodland sounds. Gal has created around 50 sound installations and media art projects over the last 10 years, and has collaborated with Kori on many of her previous works, including her two most recent - "Shinkai" at the Ise Cultural Foundation in New York and "Infination" at the Center for Contemporary Art in Seattle.
Kori, who has been using sound in her installations since 1997, said she considers architecture and sound to be very similar in that they both create space - whether between physical objects or sounds.
Bell Gallery curator Vesela Sretenovic said she feels the JUKAI fulfills its purpose: to evoke "opinions, feelings, and experiences."
Sretenovic said she invited Kori to create a site-specific piece for the gallery based on what she had seen of Kori's previous works. The project was realized after almost a year of planning and design. While the bulk of the installation took three weeks to build, the 3,000-4,000 clear balloons that fill the space and hang from the ceiling took four people three days to inflate, Kori said.
Although the process was long and complex, Sretenovic said she is glad the gallery took on the project and "glad to have another international artist be part of the Providence art scene."
Kori said she approaches the finite gallery space in the same way as the Japanese tea ceremony. "The tea ceremony should be as important your life. Every small space could be as important as the whole universe," she said.
The exhibit runs until Oct. 21.
