ART CITIES:Tokyo-Kohei Nawa

Since completing a Ph.D in fine art sculpture from Kyoto City University of Art in 2003, Kohei Nawa has won several awards including the Kirin Art Award 2003, confirming his reputation as an up-and-coming young artist whose work is highly regarded both in Japan and overseas. Together with the influence of British sculpture derived from his experience as an exchange student at the Royal College of Art, one can also discern in Nawa’s works the development of the Japanese sculptural approach of focusing on the “outer layer”.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Gyre Gallery Archive

Kohei Nawa presents his solo exhibition “Oracle”, the title of the exhibition is a reference to things that provide a divine revelation, divine will, and guidance. The current pandemic made international travel problematic, but it mostly gave him the opportunity to spend time in the studio and work on a variety of new creations: this show reveals a selection of the pieces born from his last experimentations, including paintings in which he produced complex materiality and textures by combining multiple art media, paints, and oils, as well as new works using UV lasers.
In the “PixCell” series of sculptures, transparent spheres (cells) are used to cover the surface of an object, transforming it into PixCells (pixels + cells). The object (motif) is acquired through the internet and given a skin of a large, indeterminate number of cells, resembling an image (a group of pixels) on a computer monitor. When the object is completely covered with spheres (cells) of various sizes, dividing its skin into individual cells (PixCells), it is ready to be ‘viewed’ through lenses that enlarge and distort it. This series, whose origin was influenced by globalism and the growing significance of data, produces a visual and tactile experience that queries the reality of the skin of the object, while reflecting the relationship between the digital camera lens and the object that is digitized by it.
“Black Field” is art that deals with the theme of ‘field,’ and continues to change its state over a period of several months, employing the special characteristics of a mixture of oil paints and oil. The black oil paint that has been applied in layers on the wooden panel gradually oxidizes and hardens, beginning with the part exposed to air. Over the course of this solo exhibition, textures will emerge from the entire surface as it contracts and fissures occur. In the early stages of the creation process, even the flat parts crinkle over the course of two to three weeks, and the parts that can no longer withstand the tension in the skin crack. In the parts that have cracked, the oil paint, containing liquid rich in oil, is exposed, and a new reaction begins. This process, in which phenomena are transformed into representation, is similar to what happens to soil exposed to repeated cycles of wind and rain and dry weather, and the cracks bring to mind the cells in the skin of plants called stomata that open and close in response to changes in turgor pressure.
“Trans”, the shinroku (a deer serving as a messenger of the Gods) flying on a cloud to Kasuga has been a symbolic image throughout the history of Nara art, and this work represents Takemikazuchi, the deity enshrined in the First Hall of the Main Sanctuary at the Kasugataisha Shrine, appearing in physical form riding on a deer from Kashima to Kasuga. “Trans-Sacred Deer (g/p cloud)” was first created from data with a 3D modeling system, and made using traditional techniques such as woodcarving, lacquer, and gold and platinum leaf. Its motif is the shinroku deer depicted in the Kasuga Shinroku Shari Zushi sculpture, which is deemed to have been made sometime between Japan’s Kamakura Period and the Northern and Southern Dynasties Period.
Possessing a format similar to a horizontal emaki picture scroll, “Tornscape” (2019) is a video installation that generates natural disasters, epidemics, and the like, and is based on a theme of life as transient and empty taken from “Hojoki (An Account of My Hut)”. It uses a physics simulation to depict changes in landscape based on different types of drift sand and weather by employing a program based on the theory of the formation of sand dunes on Mars. Following on this experience of creating art on the computer in collaboration with programmers, “Dune” is a series that began from a process of trial and error in which he tried to actually represent landscape transformation using paint instead of video.
In “Blue Seed” UV lasers irradiate the surface of a translucent panel painted with special pigments, depicting the silhouettes of the cross sections of 3D models with the theme of plant seeds and ovules. Line drawings that change color temporarily due to the ultraviolet light and appear to be saturated with blue slowly disappear several seconds after they form. A series of scanlines with precise pitch angle appear, with their afterimages forming three-dimensional images of seeds and ovules. Usually with drawing, the artist faces the question of whether to fix the image created on the canvas, but with “Blue Seed”, the images are repeatedly generated by computer and then fade naturally, without ever being fixed. The images of seeds and ovules, which have the potential to grow as individual lifeforms, indicate the birth and ephemeral nature of life, which may flicker tenuously, but also possesses permanence as a continuous system.
Commencing from a single point and propagating as a network crawling around a space, Nawa’s “Catalyst” works are intermediate between sculpture and drawing. The series includes site-specific works drawn directly onto walls. The thermoplastic glue that forms these networks becomes liquid when heated by a glue gun, but cools again when it adheres to the support, returning to solid form and becoming firmly fixed in place. Aggregations of transparent lines of glue develop into forms reminiscent of expanding neural networks, plant creepers growing in search of light, or slime molds. In the resulting shapes can be seen the urge to move upward in opposition to the pull of gravity, horizontal extension like that of spreading wings, and the downward stretch of stalks or stems.

Info: Gyre Gallery, 3F Gyre, 5-10-1 Jingumae, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo, Duration: 23/10/2020-31/1/2021, Days & Hours: Daily 11:00-20:00, https://en.gyre-omotesando.com