COOL TO THE TOUCH

"Among the genuine Greek and Roman antiquities on view were several reconstructions, but vividly painted, daring visitors to decide whether the maquillage felt like a revelation or vandalism. Some found the effect refreshingly jolting; others were faintly repelled. Writing in the Washington Post, critic Philip Kennicott registered his unease at figures whose eyes seemed "too eager to please," likening their lifelikeness to waxworks or animatronics."

"How could it not, when it features a talking Roman statue? Yagi's modus operandi, of course, is literary rather than art-historical. The work that occupies the omphalos of this svelte tale is a marble figure depicting the love goddess, Venus. ("APHRODITE OF PALIANO / REPRODUCTION OF GREEK STATUE BY ROMAN SCULPTOR / 1ST TO 2ND CENTURY," reads the accompanying placard.) The object does not regain her original colors, but she is granted language, memory, and eventually a sense of desire."

"What's perhaps most distinctive about Yagi's statue is her "soft, alto-leaning voice." That indelible inflection, along with a laugh that sounds like "scattered raindrops," immediately intrigues Rika Horauchi, the novel's protagonist, who has been hired to sit and converse with the sculpture, in Latin, on Mondays, when the museum is closed to the public. If the pair were wrangled into the rectangle of a photo, Venus and Rika would present a striking contrapuntal image."

When the Museum Is Closed centers on a marble reproduction of Aphrodite granted speech, memory, and emergent desire. The protagonist, Rika Horauchi, is employed to sit and converse with the statue in Latin during Mondays when the museum is closed. Venus speaks in a soft, alto-leaning voice and laughs like scattered raindrops, producing an intimate, contrapuntal image of seminude divinity and a human interlocutor. The novel engages questions of legibility, lifelikeness, and alterity akin to reactions to painted reconstructions of antiquities, provoking both jolting revelation and faint repulsion. The narrative navigates personhood, desire, and the uneasy proximity between viewer and artifact.

Read at Artforum