Gallery Links:

Jim Campbell
William Kentridge
Mariko Mori
Pepón Osorio
Tony Oursler
Nam June Paik
Peter Sarkisian

Mariko Mori
Kumano, 1998-1999
DVD, 11 minutes
Courtesy Deitch Projects, New York and Koyanagi Gallery, Tokyo

Inspired by the Buddhist concept that all things in the universe are interconnected, Mariko Mori believes that art shares with electronic technology, religion and even fashion photography the ability to give form to our dreams, fantasies and desires. Her work envisions fantastic worlds and beings in spectacular photographs and videos that look surprisingly real. Mori's art removes legendary figures from the historical past and recontextualizes them outside of time. By merging seemingly oppositional themes such as nature and culture, religion and science, past and future, Mori advances Andy Warhol's Pop philosophy of the early 1960s that broke down similarly oppositional barriers between "high" art and "low" popular culture.

Mori studied fashion design in Tokyo, worked briefly as a model and later studied fine art in England. This background is reflected in her elaborately produced photographs, videos and sculpture that are as characteristic of Hollywood as they are an artist's studio. Her recent work involves exotic landscapes, computer-generated images and choreographed performances for which the artist designs her own costumes and plays the central characters.

In Kumano, the artist assumes the identity of three characters: a messenger wearing a white fox skin, a deity at the shrine from which the video takes its name, and a cyborg in futuristic dress conducting a traditional tea ceremony. The scenes and rituals that Mori performs in Kumano, however, are deliberately vague. The artist is less interested in reproducing a specific historical narrative than in evoking a generalized sense of the transformative power of ritual experience. While illustrations of religious history or legend typically place figures in the remote past, Kumano confuses our sense of time with computer-generated, futuristic objects such as the UFO in the sky and the glowing high-tech temple. Kumano presents a world in which the past, present and future harmoniously coexist.

Dominic Molon, et al., Mariko Mori (Chicago: Museum of Contemporary Art; London: Serpentine Gallery, 1998).

Suggested Links:

Journal of Contemporary Art
An interview with Mariko Mori
Time Out New York
A review of Mori's exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum of Art