On March 11, 2011, Japan experienced a natural disaster of an unprecedented scale. Coastal towns, built over many years, were engulfed in an instant by gigantic waves. Many of us came to realize that instead of fighting nature we must find ways to live with it. In Ever-lasting Nature Ever-changing Cities, artists Naoto Tanno and Masato Shigemori express their contrasting views on urban development and nature, and insights on how we can coexist with nature.
Tanno captures and expresses through his art the quiet, almost unnoticeable humanity hiding in man-made objects and the energy it emits. His first encounter of a metropolis—of seeing the bright city lights against the dark sky of Tokyo for the first time—had a great impact on him and it has been a driving force behind his art. Having lived surrounded by the great nature of Hokkaido, Tanno appreciates not only the beauty of nature but also its destructiveness. People typically perceive only coldness and artificiality in city lights and other man-made structures, but Tanno believes that city lights bring people together and gives them warmth—a different kind of warmth than from nature.
He depicts urban landscapes using semi-monotone colors and a style that, at first glance, appears minimalist and metallic, but the work has the same kind of warmth and organic presence he sees in cities. This exhibition features Tanno’s trademark style: a mechanical, urban landscape drawn in a single stroke—the single line representing humanity connecting nature with urban life.
Shigemori, on the other hand grew up in a city, and bore witness to the destructive nature of urban development. While he has great respect for nature’s resilience and ability to revitalize itself, he questions the extent of humanity’s impact on the environment. If humans did not exist, Shigemori argues, the world’s animals, plants, and other wildlife would be thriving. He believes that people, animals, and plants are all living creatures with a common origin, and cities developed by man should be viewed as equivalent to nests built by animals. The divide between urban areas and nature, he says, is merely a human concept.
In his work Shigemori repeats motifs of the natural environment, such as leaves and trees. But they are not like any in this world, but rather are like sprites springing from his imagination to voice protest against the world in which the environment is on the brink of losing the battle against human civilization. Yet, while plants and flowers appear vulnerable and frail, the power of nature is far beyond what we can even begin to imagine. In contrast, cities are far more fragile—they simply wither when neglected or abandoned.
