Did I want to write about the exhibition of Saki Matsumoto, A Letter From a Swallow, at NTK (National Library of Technology, Cafe Prostoru) in March? Yep.
Was I able to do it? Nope.
Because I wanted to write something good, but everything always turned out bad.
Why? First of all, because I lack the talent. If I don’t really believe in what I’m writing, the result doesn’t look right (many years ago I used to write articles for magazines, and it was the reason to start my blog: to have a possibility to write what I really think, and not what I was asked to, because it’s hard, very hard to write good things about bad things (but we are all young sometimes, and sometimes we all need money)). And secondly, because although I was able to see the exhibition, I was not able to perceive it at all.
Because I lack not only the talent but also sensitivity: a true connoisseur won’t be disturbed by loud music (there’s little that can compete, except perhaps for concert venues and neighbours’ TVs), or by shouting students drinking beer (the cafe is in the library, after all), or by the fact that in order to see anything you have to lean over all those people and their drinks because the work you’re interested in hangs on the wall above the table where everyone is heatedly discussing something. But I was. And I didn’t want to disturb people (even for the sake of art). And people didn’t want to be disturbed. But it wasn’t a win-win situation.
I made two attempts, one on the opening day (March 3, Hinamatsuri), the other — on one of the Mondays when I specially arrived at NTK early, before the start of my Japanese lesson, and both attempts failed. Even on Monday afternoon, everyone is already drinking beer and trying to drown out the music.
And okay, maybe I’m not the type of person to appreciate that kind of atmosphere, but let’s be honest: the cafe’s target audience didn’t seem too interested in the colourful pictures hanging around the perimeter either.
So, although the exhibition lasted a couple of months, which was enough for a lot of attempts (I visit the library almost every week), in the end nothing worthwhile came out of it (interestingly, Cafe Prostoru regularly hosts new exhibitions; although it seems that the formal part of the opening, with the speech and reception, is the only thing that really matters). Since I was able to write maximum one sentence about everything I saw («Yes, but why?»), I decided to skip this topic that time (and I didn’t even manage to take any good photos, so there was nothing to show in polite silence, too).
Now another exhibition of Saki Matsumoto (Where Did I Hear Cicadas Last Time?), dedicated to places (all kinds of places) important to the artist, which served as a source of inspiration and eventually turned out to be inhabited by mythical (or not so) creatures, is being held at Xao, bookshop and gallery (which sounds promising from the very beginning).
And this time it’s wonderful, There is a lot of everything, but little of everyone.
The music is nice (that is, I listen to that kind of music too) and quiet, there are books all around, and so many works of Saki Matsumoto are presented that it’s just some kind of holiday, as if a truck with candies accidentally had flipped over on my street (it’s a common expression, which is translated more or less literally from Russian).
Everything can be approached, everything can finally be examined (as for some works, I’ve been waiting for this opportunity for a long time; well, it’s not that I was waiting specifically, I was just glad to finally see it not in a photograph, but up close, but usually people in similar situations say something like «I’ve been waiting for this opportunity for a long time» — so here it is).
Because I love yōkai, I love folklore, I love kitsune, I love homemade puppet theatres (there was one; many of us encountered something similar in childhood, sometimes even made it ourselves), and I love the theme of Persepolis so much that Matsumoto’s Silk Road (copy 25 out of 50) hangs in my apartment, framed and in a prominent place (it’s always strange to see it on a display and then at home, and vice versa).
And, yes, I haven’t felt this good for a long time (especially at an exhibition).
The only question that will remain unanswered is whether it was so good because everything was so questionable in the spring, or was it so good just on its own?
I’ll never know, but it’s still interesting.
The exhibition will run until September 12. Counting from the opening, it will last only two weeks.
But perhaps this is enough. Two weeks in this format give much more than two months, as practice has shown (and since the store will be closed for an additional couple of days due to participation in the Tabook Festival, the concentration of quality for the remaining number of time will be even higher).
