{"id":34756,"date":"2020-01-31T08:04:53","date_gmt":"2020-01-31T13:04:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/?p=34756"},"modified":"2020-05-24T09:13:30","modified_gmt":"2020-05-24T13:13:30","slug":"cloud-cities-melting-cities-a-review-of-yumiko-onos-epitomes-at-museum-of-contemporary-art-taipei","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/2020\/01\/31\/cloud-cities-melting-cities-a-review-of-yumiko-onos-epitomes-at-museum-of-contemporary-art-taipei\/","title":{"rendered":"Cloud Cities, Melting Cities: A Review of Yumiko Ono\u2019s \u201cEpitomes\u201d at Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei"},"content":{"rendered":"

A review of \u201cEpitomes,\u201d an exhibition by Yumiko Ono, on view at Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Taipei through 2 February 2020.<\/em><\/p>\n

Not antagonistic of city versus nature, Ono\u2019s drawings come across like peaceful meetings between two forces that we so often see as opposites. Here, city and nature create form together.<\/blockquote><\/figure>Situated a few blocks from Taipei\u2019s central train station in an old school building, MOCA Taipei<\/em> is currently hosting a large exhibition of catastrophic visions of past, present, and future. As large, loud, and exciting as the exhibition is, it is ultimately the most simple of works in the museum that wins the viewer\u2019s eye and mind.<\/p>\n

Tucked into a corner of the first floor of the MOCA building, away from the catastrophes represented in the main show, Yumiko Ono\u2019s Epitomes<\/em> offers us subtle, yet vital reflections on our urban structures, and the cultures and natures that form them.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Pencil drawings from Yumiko Ono\u2019s \u201cCloud City\u201d series at MOCA Taipei. Photo: CC BY\/SA, Patrick M. Lydon<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The central works of Ono\u2019s exhibition are her Cloud City<\/em> series. These simply presented works of pencil on tracing paper are unassuming at first glance, however in both their content and context, they stand out as some of the most deeply moving pieces in the museum.<\/p>\n

Within Ono\u2019s drawings, varied architectural elements from Taiwan are pieced together in pleasantly delirious sequence. From afar, they appear truly as a floating cloud cities<\/em>, urban worlds suspended in space with no roots, cities as inverted caves, spires poking out top and bottom, stalactite, stalagmite.<\/p>\n

The works come across like a marriage of Escher\u2019s etchings and the words of Calvino\u2019s Invisible Cities<\/em>.<\/p>\n

These Cloud Cities<\/em> of Ono\u2019s are not simply a hodgepodge of architectural forms. The matter of the buildings tells the tale of the environment. On close inspection, wall faces here reveal subtle natural motifs. These motifs seem to offer suggestions of Taiwan\u2019s leaves, rivers, winds, mountains, and waters, coalescing to form the walls. Interestingly, the motifs Ono chooses seem to act not as murals on<\/em> the walls, but as the walls themselves<\/em>.<\/p>\n

There is no solidity to these cities of Ono\u2019s. Instead there are ever-changing cycles \u2014 patterns of nature, framed in the architectural styles and structures of humanity.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Detail view of pencil drawings from Yumiko Ono\u2019s \u201cCloud City\u201d series at MOCA Taipei. Photo: CC BY\/SA, Patrick M. Lydon<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Not antagonistic of city versus nature, Ono\u2019s drawings come across like peaceful meetings between two forces that we so often see as opposites. Here, city and nature create form together.<\/p>\n

Also on view in this exhibition are Ono\u2019s Pan-City 10<\/em> porcelain sculptures, products of the artist\u2019s experience living in Russia and the United States, among brutalist architecture.<\/p>\n

Ono\u2019s shiny, urbanesque objects give a softness and lightness to typical brutalist form, appearing something like blocks of white butter, stacked atop each other on a summer afternoon. Their weight is made cunningly visible by Ono, as the blocky sculptures seem to slope and cave inward. One might imagine these sculptures as representations of human logic, utilitarian apartment blocks and office buildings given form, and then melting into lumpy puddles of toilet-bowl-white sameness.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Porcelain sculpture from Yumiko Ono\u2019s \u201cPan-City 10\u201d series at MOCA Taipei. Photo: CC BY\/SA, Patrick M. Lydon<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The porcelain works\u2014bleak, characterless visions of cities as structures of anthropocentricism\u2014are powerful, yet here they seem purposefully outwitted here by the quietly incisive power of Ono\u2019s simple pencil drawings.<\/p>\n

In simplicity of material, the delicate drawings offer a vision of cities as a melding of human ingenuity with nature\u2019s rhythms. Within each drawing, one can find the cycle of life and death as a city, floating in space, along with the clouds.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Detail view of pencil drawings from Yumiko Ono\u2019s \u201cCloud City\u201d series at MOCA Taipei. Photo: CC BY\/SA, Patrick M. Lydon<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The juxtaposition of the porcelain sculptures with the pencil drawings in the same space is a good thing. If one provides form and fluidity, the other gives character and context. If one offers subtle critique of the gross, the other offers subtle idolization of the sublime.<\/p>\n

It reminds one of the strong Taoist influences here Taiwan, and of the saying by the ancient philosopher Chuang Tzu, that \u201cOne who wants to have right without wrong, order without disorder, does not understand the principles of nature \u2026 to refuse one is to refuse both.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ono reminds us here, not only that there is merit to both sides, but that to follow nature in a city means to accept both the hard and the soft, the solid and the flowing, the growing and the decaying, all in their turn.<\/p>\n

As any truly resilient city knows, all forms have their roles.<\/p>\n

Patrick Lydon<\/strong>
\nOsaka<\/p>\n

On The Nature of Cities<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A review of \u201cEpitomes,\u201d an exhibition by Yumiko Ono, on view at Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Taipei through 2 February 2020. Situated a few blocks from Taipei\u2019s central train station in an old school building, MOCA Taipei is currently hosting a large exhibition of catastrophic visions of past, present, and future. As large, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":34765,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[300,1030,1093,296,1029],"tags":[40,44,47,1135],"coauthors":[204],"class_list":["post-34756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-essay-art-and-awareness","category-friec","category-friec-reviews","category-review","category-stories","tag-architecture","tag-art","tag-asia","tag-patrick-m-lydon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/92"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34756\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34756"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=34756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}