Zhou Tiehai Placebo Swiss 2000  

Can't live without a remote control? Try art on a roll. Zhou Tiehai's latest exhibition lets you choose the scene from a range of paintings on a motorized scroll. Inspired by a device used in photo studios to change photo backdrops, Zhou Tiehai has created three scrolls of large, wall-sized paintings. You can, by pushing the remote controls provided, rotate the drums of canvas and scroll through 15 large paintings.

The photo-realistic images have been spray-painted onto canvas. Many of the subjects are places and people the artist met while on a three-month art residency in Switzerland. They include the Swiss countryside, curators, art museums, his art studio stairs and an escalator. Other subjects, such as his self-portrait, the cigarette character "Joe Camel" and other advertising material, have appeared in Zhou Tiehai's previous work.

Zhou Tiehai is a young Shanghai-based artist who is best known for a series of paintings, created about 5 years ago, of mocked-up newspaper, magazine and art journal covers. In these works he criticized the tangle of commercial relationships entwining the art world.

This installation continues this theme in a less direct manner but with as much energy, fun and cheek. Besides the Zhou Tiehai exhibition, the Hara House itself -- a modernist, Bauhaus-styled building designed by architect Jin Watanabe in 1938 -- is worth a special visit.

 

Art 4-7-25 Kita-shinagawa 15 min walk JR Shinagawa station Tel: 03.3445.0651 Open: 11:00 to 17:00 (20:00 Wed.) Closed Monday Adults Y1,000 Children Y500through January 28, 2001