Reviewny.com Arlene McKanic Jan 15,2001
Kenta furusho at Jamaica Center for Arts and Leaning
One doesn’t often enter a New York art exhibit and think, “This is so sweet!” as oppose to beautiful, noble, exciting or intriguing, but that was the sentiment that came to the writer when she saw Kenta Furusho’s exhibit at the Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning.
The first thing you see is Dialogue, 2000 a mob scene of little toys, everything from the heads of Sesame Street and loony Tunes characters to a mermaid Barbie, little devils, plastic cars, trolls, little animals and dolls with the exaggerated round eyes of Japanese manga characters, all stuck and vibrating on the ends of upended tomato plant cages. The artist likens dialogue to some weird cocktail party, and claims that the vibration celebrates the exchange of thoughts.
His world maps are similarly whimsical, with blobby countries that seem to be a child’s version of what is accepted as the “real” map of the world, with fruits and vegetables thrown in to boots. Appropriately, the names of the countries are stuck anywhere and everywhere; France might be in Southeast Asia, for example, and why shouldn’t it be? The maps remind the viewer that all boundaries, in the end, are arbitrary. Furusho’s American flags, made of fabric remnants and collages, evolve around the room from the universal symbol of unity and freedom into personalized icons of what the flag might mean to a Japanese-born immigrant to America. The stars and stripes of one of the flags, for example, provide a faint background for a crowd of happy, multi-racial faces.
Please do not clime! Warns a sign on one of Furusho’s Untitled (pregnant form), 2000 works. These huge, nearly room-sized figures, inspired by his wife’s pregnant tummy, are made up of fabrics, in one case sweatshirt, stitched together and stretched over clear balloons. Poke them and they wobble like jell-o and they’re so big one expects a rumbling. “Only connect,” seems to be the theme of Furusho’s work. “There is an infinite mosaic of people and cultures that exist as a metaphor for metempsychosis that becomes a flexible environment supporting and encouraging love, peace, unity and beyond,” writes the artist. Say what?
But the exhibit, which was arranged by the artist and visual arts Director Karina Skvirsky, isn’t as well served by the space, as it should be. JCAL’s gallery is too small, longer than it is wide and the lighting isn’t as bright and cheerful as the work deserves. But the exhibit, which runs till January 27, still has a great deal of fresh, childlike charm and unfashionable optimism.
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