Yumi Kori

Here’s the opening of my review of “Jukai,” an installation at Brown University’s Bell Gallery by Yumi Kori, an artist and architect based in New York and Tokyo:

Yumi Kori’s installation “Jukai,” at Brown University’s Bell Gallery, is a magical bubbly midnight wonderland.

You walk down a dark corridor, turn a corner, and find yourself at the foot of a wood-plank dock reaching out into a sea of clear balloons, big and small, plus several that seem to hover in mid-air. Blue lanterns, resembling light sabers, hang from the ceiling, and look a bit like lightning bugs when reflected in the balloons. Here and there the walls reflect the lights and balloons, seemingly to infinity. The sounds — bird songs, crackling bugs, flowing water, wind — are both alluring and a bit disorienting. Birds don’t usually sing at night. Well, at least, not until just before dawn.

The experience feels a bit like walking into Peter Pan or Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. A wall text explains the title of the installation, “Jukai,” is loosely translated from Japanese as “deep forest or sea of trees.”

Read the rest here.

Yumi Kori, “Jukai,” Bell Gallery, Brown University, 64 College St., Providence, Sept. 8 to Oct. 21, 2007.