The earth
We’re sitting in a waiting room. A small, rectangular construction of steel and glass, which we arrived to with a tiny bus. Everyone in here already has a ticket, so what they’re really waiting for is their particular time slot. In this culture,
it’s always better to be early than to be late.
[Chotto matte kudasai]
ちょっとまってください
11 am.
We pick up our entrance passes, and borrow umbrellas on the way out.
It’s been raining a lot for the past few days, the clouds a light tint of paynes grey. The sound of shoes walking on gravel is the only noise you hear, besides the steady rain. Against the umbrellas, against the ground. A shorter walk, with a small ascension, takes you from waiting area to the entrance. Inside it’s darker, a contrast to the natural light outside. A long tunnel of mostly darkness. It feels a lot like walking in the earth, Chichu.
I know that the gift shop is on the left side when you enter the main part of the building. Besides that, the museum is sort of like a maze inside my head. Would I be able to draw it from memory? Probably not. Each room is distinct, each passage different. But the lack of windows or proper facade, makes it hard to remember and locate yourself. It’s more like a journey. Light and darkness. Ascending and descending.
Claude Monet
I’ve seen Monet before, in Paris. But seeing Monet here is a different experience. Shelves with neatly stacked leather slippers and a single row of benches, meets us in the anteroom. The ”Water Lily” exhibition, consists of two adjoined rooms. The first room is stripped clean. The only thing you notice is how the floor feels against your slippers. Small, square stones of marble, stacked neatly together. Round edges. No suture. A floor that makes you want to bend down and touch. Through the doorway you can see one out of the five water lilies.
It’s warmer in here. The air is different. More humid. In fact, the entire room feels different. The light is subdued, slipping in along the edges of the room.
Edges is maybe the wrong wording. All the corners are rounded in here. It makes it feel soft. Safe.
The Monet exhibition is just that. White walls, softly diffused light, the faint sound of leather slippers tapping against the floor. And five majestic paintings of water lilies.
James Turrell
”Open Field”, follows a certain narrative. The experience is limited to eight visitors at a time, creating a steady line outside. Inside a foyer, we get slippers. The feel of the slippers against the floor is not significant here, so these are of a simpler kind. Textile, not leather.
In the adjoining room, there’s nothing except a black granite stair at the far end of the room. Like a pyramid. At the top of the stair is a bright, blue rectangle. We’re instructed to walk up the stairs, through the wall. Suddenly the rectangle changes from just being a projection of light – to an opening in the wall.
The entire experience is a bit like that. Like walking into an open field without knowing what lies ahead. There is no time for expecting, just doing, following directions.
”Open Sky” is the polar opposite of ”Open Field”. A square-room, with a bench of marble, that follows the walls of the room. Marble, and white walls, slanted slightly inwards, and in the ceiling – an opening to the sky. If it rains, it rains here too. The climate is inside, and outside. In fact, that’s a recurring theme throughout the entire building. Looking at Chichu from above, the only traceof a building, are the openings towards the sky. Geometric shapes randomly paired together, forming a pattern. The journey through the museum is like that. Passages, stairs, walkways, all open to the sky. If it rains, it rains here too.
I’m not sure where I have been, but it’s somewhere else. A vacuum. Imagine being so absorbed, that time becomes something else. Walking in the rooms, under the ground, it’s hard to grasp what parts of the experience has to do with place, and what has to do with circumstance.
We come in tiny groups, and what we focus on is experiencing. It’s not crowded. No sound of shutter sounds clicking in the background. It rains when we’re outside, when we’re inside it doesn’t. The focus is on being. What happens in the now.