A scant six months since it opened and Tokyo's Rice Gallery is looking less like a contemporary art space and more like a fantasy car showroom.
The man responsible is "Speed King" Tetsuya Nakamura, whose sleek and shiny rocket-powered, single-seater vehicles are scheduled to spend the rest of this month arrayed in tight formation in the middle of the big Koto Ward gallery.
But appearances can be deceiving. Although they look like they are ready to challenge a zero-to-whatever acceleration record, closer inspection of Nakamura's constructions reveals that they have neither wheels nor engines. And they don't even have cockpits. For these are not racers, but sculptures -- designed to sit, immobile, in an art gallery. Intended to reify speed.