Pulling Time

Viewers were able to touch and pull the ropes that extended from holes in the walls and gaps in the floor of the gallery. Each rope was connected to another rope or to something else in a different location. It was impossible to grasp how all of the ropes moved or behaved at the same time.

Decorator Crab—Pulling Time《デコレータークラブ—プリング・タイム》, 2023
Installation view: Decorator Crab—Measuring the Future, Pulling Time
Kirishima Open-Air Museum, Kagoshima, Japan
Dimensions variable. Rope, winch, pulley, wood
Photo: © Takehiro Iikawa, courtesy of the artist

Pulling Time begins with a simple gesture: pulling a rope in front of you. Yet the motion affects something not visible here and now—something distant, perhaps even hidden within time itself. The ropes extend beyond the gallery, weaving through corridors, walls, and out into the open air. When a viewer casually pulls a rope, elements in other locations shift in response. However, these changes remain unseen by the person who initiated them. Someone else may encounter the result without knowing its cause. This sense of disconnection and invisible connection lies at the heart of the work.

The phenomena that emerge—bags swaying or moving, the color of text shaped by rope changing, ropes stretching or contracting in unseen spaces—appear as tangible expressions of this hidden network. No viewer can perceive the whole system at once. Instead, they rely on partial sensations and trial-and-error to grasp spatial relationships.

Here, pulling becomes a quiet act of drawing out unseen relationships—an attempt to reach beyond the immediate. The viewer, perhaps without realizing it, becomes a sender: setting something into motion that may unexpectedly enter another’s field of vision.

Decorator Crab—Pulling Time《デコレータークラブ—プリング・タイム》, 2023
Installation view: Decorator Crab—Measuring the Future, Pulling Time
Kirishima Open-Air Museum, Kagoshima, Japan
Dimensions variable. Rope, winch, pulley, wood
Photo: © Takehiro Iikawa, courtesy of the artist

Decorator Crab—Pulling Time《デコレータークラブ—プリング・タイム》, 2024
Installation view: Imagining the unseen everyday
Tokyo Shibuya Koen-dori Gallery, Tokyo, Japan
Dimensions variable. Rope, winch, pulley, wood
Photo: © Takehiro Iikawa, courtesy of the artist

Decorator Crab—Pulling Time《デコレータークラブ—プリング・タイム》, 2024
Installation view: What’s Art?
Tottori Prefectural Museum, Tottori, Japan
Dimensions variable. Rope, winch, pulley, wood
Photo: © Takehiro Iikawa, courtesy of the artist

← All works in the Decorator Crab Series