February 16-March 17, 2001
Taro Hattori
Immobility
 UUS (United Universal Systems), 2001 neon lamp, slide film, metal, wood. dimensions variable
Taro Hattori's first one person show at Peter Miller Gallery will include three installations as well as a collaborative project with Mayumi Hamanaka. The work on view will examine how elements of society lead to inner or psychological immobility while continuing to celebrate movement and change.
Globalism has led to interchangeability: Heathrow, O'Hare, and LaGuardia all utilize the same system of international symbols, all house similar food vendors and identical systems of transportation (escalators, elevators, people movers). Cultural differences historically evident in clothing, language and architecture have all become absorbed and commodified, no longer signifying anything other than the fashion trend of the month. Such a climate, while ostensibly attempting to unify and communicate multiple points of view, succeeds instead in denying the individual any identity other than that of consumer.
 detail: UUS (United Universal Systems), 2001, six rolls of slide film with neon lamps, 32 images are lined up on each
Hattori: One day when I was in O'Hare Airport it seemed that people were coming from nowhere and going to nowhere, then everybody's feet looked like they were floating. Then, a question came to my head as if my feet were on the ground even in the city...
 Exhaustiveness, 2001 metal, slide, halogen lamp, paper, dimensions variable kinetic structure with light and 3 images projected on the floor covered with pages from a encyclopedia
Hattori: The desire to know things is that to expand "self" or "ego." When I was a child, I read Encyclopedia everyday, and learned things in the world, and the book "encyclopedia" almost became the world itself. Collecting knowledge. Possessing knowledge, so that I can see the trace of my brain everywhere in the world, people, thoughts. Then I can keep my position stable.
 Islands (by Mayumi Hamanaka & Taro Hattori), 2001 plastic, ink jet print, barcodes, computer, text, etc. dimensions variable 200 paper dolls with barcodes which connect to the maps of islands on computer
Hattori: A name is a variant of another name. We are variants of each other. One kind of variants are connected with other kind of variants, standing by their own but defined by "others."
Hamanaka: Are we interchangeable? Do we belong to something? Do we really have our names? An Island is a small portion of land. Superficially, it stands on its own.
 details: Islands (by Mayumi Hamanaka & Taro Hattori), 2001
 Proof, 2001 video, monitor, metal, plastic, etc. dimensions variable video: 30 min. loop 9 monitors which are installed on small baby carts.
Hattori: We need something that verifies our own identities. Even though that thing is something living or human being, we optimize its being. If that thing is mobile for us, means immobile by itself, we can violently carry it wherever we go. We can bind it forever.
Literary sources from left to right on west and north walls:
Haruki Murakami, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle
Milan Kundera, Immortality
Haruki Murakami, A wild sheep chase
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