ART CITIES:Hong Kong-Kohei Nawa

Moving fluidly between media, Kohei Nawa’s work explores issues of science and digital culture and examines the relationship between nature and artificiality, challenging viewers’ sensory experiences. Interested in industrial mass-production, Nawa often works with synthetic compounds, using them to mediate between ideas of the real and the virtual, perception and illusion.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Pace Gallery Archive

In “Recent works”, his solo exhibition in Hong Kong, Kohei Nawa presents his series “PixCell” created by covering the surface of an object with transparent spheres, transforming each into a “husk of light”. The title of the series is a word invented by the artist, combines the idea of a “pixel”, the smallest unit of a digital image, with that of a “cell”, the smallest unit of living matter. Showcased in the exhibition, the taxidermied deer have been completely transformed through the artist’s use of variably sized “PixCell” beads, producing a distorted lens effect that occurs throughout the cell units. The result provides a visual experience of seeing into various details simultaneously as they are magnified in an array. Moreover, in traditional Japanese art, the deer is often depicted as a companion of ancient sages and has auspicious and poetic associations, adding to the perception of the visual with the spiritual. Another highlight in the show, is a work from Nawa’s “Throne” series, which comments on the acceleration of computers, science, and artificial intelligence in contemporary society, conveying the artist’s concern that humans will blindly follow advanced technology that boasts absolute intelligence. Created with reference to the forms of festival floats and portable shrines that appear in the rituals and festivities in Asia, this series on view attempts to express that premonition. Spherical mirrors are placed at the center of the work facing the front and back. They are made of platinum foil and represent “the eyes overlooking the world” where the frontal mirror faces the future and the back reflects into the past. In the “Particle” series, objects are covered with silicon carbide powder, a material that has the properties of both diamonds and silicon and emerge as radiant sparkles of light in darkened spaces. This material treatment is also used in the sculptures that result from the performance work “VESSEL” in which the artist converts the physique of choreographed dancers into three-dimensional digital informationto materialise them into sculptural forms.

Info: Pace Gallery, 12/F, H Queen’s, 80 Queen’s Road Central, Hong Kong, Duration: 19/7-29/8/19, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-17:00, www.pacegallery.com