Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on March 2014

Situated atop Louis Vuitton’s handbag shop in Omotesando and financed by the sales going on below, the Espace Louis Vuitton art venue can never be entirely divorced from broader commercial interests. The free shows put on are designed to reflect further glory on the famous brand, while also sending out subtle signals that may or may not help you to make a purchase downstairs.

This is the case with the present exhibition “Traces of Disappearance,” which has a central message of “evanescence”—no, not the Goth metal band that has been on hiatus for several years, but rather the process of things disappearing and fading away.

In short, the subliminal message is: “Nothing lasts forever, especially you, sweetheart, so, go on, splash out on that tasty little Chain Louise calfskin evening bag you spied on the way in.”

But commercial spin-offs aside, evanescence is a worthy subject for an art show, as beauty is at its most poignant when it is about to fade—at least that’s always been the appeal of the short-lived cherry blossom season in these parts.

Featuring art by Anne and Patrick Poirier, Kasper Kovitz, Goang-Ming Yuan and Naoya Hatakeyama—much of it designed for the site—the show invites visitors “to reflect upon the current condition of a fragile world” and feel the ephemeral nature of things.

Naoya Hatakeyama, a Japanese photographer and winner of the much coveted Kimura Ihei Prize for Photography contributes some photographic works (i.e. big photographs in fancy frames) showing beautifully bleak landscapes from Mont Ventoux in France.

Although in some cases the “beauty” may be debatable, the bleakness never is. Hatakeyama seems to be seeking after a sense of spiritual “alpinism” of the kind that would have appealed to the Italian philosopher and esotericist Julius Evola, but there is an unfortunate emphasis on the horizontal that deadens the works.

For this reason these photographs are easily overshadowed by some of the other larger works in the show, such as Kasper Kovitz’s The Sheer Size of It (2013), a vast, translucent mosaic that has some of the qualities of stained glass. The actual scene depicted is attractive in a banal way, but the real payoff—or not—is realizing that the piece is made from thousands of jelly babies stuck on plexiglass.

Anne and Patrick Poirier’s The Soul of the World (2013/2014) dominates the centre of the high-ceilinged space. In essence this is a large and very stylish birdcage with a few disembodied tree branches reaching into it.

I couldn’t help being reminded of another female musical reference at this point, namely the lyrics to Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi”: They took all the trees/ Put ’em in a tree museum/ And they charged the people/ A dollar and a half just to see ’em.”

This is what this work points towards, the reduction of nature to a decorative feature of urban modernity. This installation will appeal to the frustrated urbanite with a green chip on his shoulder, but the Poiriers’ work is also concerned with the concept of memory in a broader cultural and social context, as the essence of civilization and the ways that this can be erased – another compelling reason to nip downstairs for that tasty handbag.

Espace Louis Vuitton Tokyo, until Apr 13. See exhibition listings (Harajuku/Aoyama) for details.