KVT – Paramodel is Paramount

KVT in constructive paradise

Oh you lovely people at the Japan Foundation….you’ve done it again…..given us another taste of brilliance.

A visit to the Japan Foundation on the corner of Tran Hung Dao and Ngo Quyen is a truly wonderful experience. Here, a very famous Japanese art duo called Paramodel have installed what every child…especially little boys…would call their dream world. It’s marvellous. The art work is glued all over the exterior of the Foundation’s building, over an extensive section of a covered courtyard, up and down stairs and all over floors, walls and ceilings of the art gallery.

The installation was commenced last week and by Thursday the team of artist Harashi Yasuhiko and his four hard working assistants – who follow his blueprints – will have completed the art work that has been a treat to drop by each day and watch it develop.

Many of the images used in this piece are from construction day 2 and I’ll show more at a later date when the creators finish their serious play. It remains up until March 11 and is one of those truly exciting art works that art lovers, families, and constuctivists of all types should get along to see.

My first realization that Paramodel existed was when I saw their delightful and quirky sushi food samples mounted on toy trucks which are highlighted in this video from Mori Yu Gallery (as are tempting glimpses of other work by Paramodel)

Paramodel take their name from a couple of sources…the most prosaic being the Japanese peramoduru (dioramas made using plastic toys) and the more interesting English paradise and paradox. The kid and the adult part of every grown up viewer’s psyches will argue with the last two terms, with the kid winning unless you are a total conservative.

Paramodel uses blue plastic train tracks to create geometric lines and shapes….and in some installations uses plastic pipes. From a distance you think that they are drawings. Spaces created are often filled in with color or 3D materials. Usually, as in the main gallery at the Foundation, toys are used as essential components and hence the attraction to that inner and outer child.

A statement from the Mori Yu gallery from their show ‘The World According to P’ says it all really: The Paramodel world is an unpressured one, free from high seriousness and pretension. It revels in play and infinite variations upon established themes and stylistic preoccupations….so much so that the artists say that their oeuvre is a never ending construction site…

For me to say much more would be redundant. Suffice to add that it’s unlikely that we’ll see anything as grand as Paramodel in the art scene in Hanoi for the rest of the year. I’m totally sold!

These two links (link 1 and link 2) give a look at the duo’s various installations including a fascinating variation where light beams are used as part of the drawing Paramodel.

I had to include this link because it shows other exciting installation works from a group exhibition in Osaka that included Paramodel and was titled ‘Ways of Worldmaking’.