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Disneyland for architects, concrete and eggplants: Serhii Makhno about “his” Japan

It’s worth a trip to Japan …

to look at sakura blooming, to see Wabi Sabi and Fuji. And in general – everything is different there. We ideate, see otherwise, and believe in different gods. The Japanese have a sign: if on the first night after the New Year, you see the Fuji mountain in your dreams – it seems the happiness. Birds and eggplants in dreams also bring luck.

When I go to Japan, I take it with me…

I travel light. Those things that you can fold into a backpack. Truly, returning home is way much harder. This time I’ve bought twenty books about Japanese ceramics, and all that must have been placed somewhere.

Between Tokyo and Kyoto, I’ll choose…

Kyoto. Once the city was called the Japanese “capital of calm”, and I have some sort of unequal sense of home there.

My favourite hotel in Japan…

is designed by Tadao Ando. This is a place that makes you change your vision of the concrete. It is warm here.

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In Japan, it’s bound to…

meet the sunrise. Several times I woke up at 5 am and, while my friend was asleep, I watched the city.

Japanese gardens are cranes and turtles.

If you look at them from above. It is striking that it’s a natural, built by man. At the Adachi Museum, I saw a waterfall, which is 15 m high. I was looking at it and really could not understand how it can be artificial.

Adachi Art Museum

is a uniquely beautiful place, it is “mine” by emotions and mood. This is a garden museum, inside which there are 6 small gardens. Moss, stones, sand, and a lake with carp are ideal, as on photo stacks. Also, my perception of the museum was influenced by the atmosphere of expectation. We drove about 700 km to get to it.

One more “place to go”

– Lee Ufan Museum. This is a Korean artist who has lived in Japan for a long time, so everyone calls him Japanese. His standard installation is a stone in the middle of a lawn or a metal platen. We wouldn’t understand, and in Europe, it is called “mono-ha”. This is a style where the material is not a mean but a goal. Artists use objects of nature or items without changing them.

If you compare contemporary museums in Japan and Ukraine…

there are no museums in Ukraine. Contemporary art can be seen at the PinchukArtCentre. I go there for exhibitions, and some things inspire me. But it’s like biting a pie, not to eat. We would not be disturbed by our own Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Netherlands or the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Bilbao, Spain.

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The intense emotions I have experienced…

at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Ando on the island of Naoshima. It is called Disneyland for architects. I visited it last year, and I’ll be back again in a year.

The story that happened to me…

once I was asked to take a picture because someone thought I’m an actor. OK. And if you talk about beauty – then Japan is amazing at every step.

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