An artist’s view of the city

3__The Aluminium Sculpture

An artist’s view of the city

Since 2006 the park of the Tokyo Midtown lifestyle centre in Roppongi has been the site of a monumental aluminium sculpture that is an object of amazement and a photo motif for the people of Tokyo and tourists alike. Although Caverna Lunaris has long had the status of a landmark, hardly anyone knows about the creative person who was responsible for it.

His name is Florian Claar, a German who went to Japan in 1994 to turn his artistic visions into reality. He studied art in Stuttgart, specialising in installations and sculpture. Even in his early years, the connections between art, stage performance, architecture and music were important to him, and to this day they remain an indispensable part of his projects.

This versatile artist now has an international reputation: his sculptures and art-for-architecture works enrich public spaces not only in Japanese cities but are also in great demand in China and Taiwan.

Even after living here for a very long time, Tokyo still provides inspiration for the artist: ‘I regard the city as a wilderness, as a wild garden, where people and architecture form an organic entity that is in a state of permanent change. The appearance of the city alters so quickly that a district that you have not visited for a while is unrecognisable after a few years and can be rediscovered as if it were new.’ Claar is fascinated not only by the city, but also by the tolerance of Japanese society, which is always open to technical innovations and to new media, and above all by the Japanese audience for art, which took enthusiastically to media art at a very early stage.

His recommendation to visitors to the Caverna Lunaris work is that they should not only view the sculpture from a distance, but should also come closer in order to look through its openings, as the beholder’s perception of it changes according to the distance.

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Address Tokyo Midtown, Akasaka 9-7-1, Minato-ku, 107 – 0052 Tokyo, www.fl orianclaar.com | Getting there Oedo and other metro lines to Roppongi | Tip In the Tokyo Midtown shopping centre, the Suntory Museum of Art puts on attractive exhibitions.