Does the museum contain the art or does the art contain the museum? This is the kind of question I sometimes find myself asking when I visit the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art. This is because among all the museums in Tokyo, the Hara sees itself less as a simple white cube in which to neutrally display artworks and more as a kind of collaborator and participant in the art.
This is also why it makes perfect sense that it is hosting ¡°The Dream of Polifilo,¡± the first solo exhibition by Nicolas Buffe, a French-born Tokyo-based artist. Buffe has the kind of expansive and polymorphous imagination that can¡¯t sit politely within the frame of a painting or even stay within the walls of a gallery or museum.
This is evident as soon as you pass through the gates of the Hara, a delightful, Art Deco-ish building set in its own grounds in a well-to-do residential neighbourhood in Tokyo. The entrance has been transformed into a giant cartoon dog¡¯s head, and to see the show you must venture into the beast¡¯s belly ¡ª the museum building itself.
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