A funny thing happened on the way to ¡°Le Forum.¡± Outside Ochanomizu Station, a small group of neo-Nazis had set up shop and were playing the Japanese national anthem. One of them was wearing a modified SS uniform and proudly let me take his picture. I noticed that his jack boots and Sam Browne belt were slightly scuffed and cracked.
Apart from the opportunity to start this article with a groan-worthy pun using the title of a ¡®60s Sondheim musical, it seems worth mentioning the encounter in this particular review, as a strong theme in Grasso¡¯s exhibition at the Ginza Maison Hermes Le Forum is the end of empires. And one of his video pieces features the fascist buildings of Mussolini¡¯s Esposizione Universale Roma.
With the deliberately dodgy CGI of a low-rent History Channel documentary, deserted colonnades, vainglorious statuary and the infamous Palazzo della Civilta Italiana become gradually illuminated by the dawn light of two stars, the sun and Nemesis, a hypothetical dwarf star that, it has been suggested, was the cause of Earth¡¯s periodic mass extinctions.
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