Kohei Nawa “Biomatrix”
Kohei Nawa will hold “Biomatrix,” his first new exhibition in three years.
It will run from October 10 (Wed) to December 8 (Sat), 2018, at the Yanaka gallery SCAI THE BATHHOUSE.
Looking at the key visual image, one has no sense of it beyond the certainty that this must be seen with one’s own eyes.
Based on his own conceptual framework “PixCell” — combining the “Pixel” of the digital image with the “Cell,” the smallest constituent unit of a living organism — Kohei Nawa has generated a variety of skin-like imagery.
By intersecting new developments in materials and techniques with images of organic living bodies, he has put forward new visions that stimulate the viewer’s tactile-visual senses. Grounded in the recognition that nature and human 投稿一覧 works are all assemblages of particles, Nawa’s sculptures — which do not even draw a distinction between solid and liquid — take form in accordance with the universal laws of gravity and physics.
They are characterized by a generative process in which information, as though inscribed in the particles like DNA, spontaneously sculpts space.
In the “LIQUID” series (2003–), which forms the core of this exhibition, liquid materials combining silicone oil, metallic powder, and pigment are used to generate bubbles (cells) on the surface of the liquid. Bubbles that continuously rise and vanish — each one is both an element of the cells that form the skin, and a unit of the phenomenon caused by the motion of particles.
The pool of electrically controlled liquid material becomes a skin that amplifies visual information, and is understood as the foundation of the “Pixel” that generates the cellular pattern.
The silicone oil, which continues an endless circulation like magma or blood, describes the movement of the liquid surface at a speed that betrays the viewer’s expectations, in accordance with its high-viscosity characteristics. The neatly ordered arrangement — like a framework (matrix) that generates cells — fills the space along with the simultaneous, widespread generation and disappearance of bubbles and the popping sounds of surface tension, and the continuous flux of changing visual information stimulates the viewer’s senses.Nawa has previously recreated organic phenomena using contemporary chemical materials — “Force” (2015), a linear black oil that flows endlessly in a white cube, and “Foam” (2013), which endlessly generates bubbles. This is grounded in Nawa’s methodology of reducing every material to the molecular level, returning to physical phenomena such as the surface tension and fluidity of liquids, and coaxing forth the properties of the material. The interface becomes a skin that connects matter with our perception, and, through interaction with space, an image is generated as an experience — and at this moment, all oppositions such as real and virtual, micro and macro, natural and artificial vanish upon this skin, and the bubbles rising in the silicone oil press upon the viewer, transcending the boundary between living body and object.
Kohei Nawa has been the subject of much discussion at home and abroad, including his special exhibition inside the pyramid of the Musée du Louvre in Paris.
We are pleased to announce this long-awaited new exhibition — his first in three years since the “FORCE” exhibition in 2015 — and hope you will help spread the word.
The latest works from Nawa — this is something to look forward to!
Overview
Kohei Nawa
Biomatrix
October 10 (Wed) – December 8 (Sat), 2018, 12:00 – 18:00 Closed: Sun / Mon / holidays
Opening reception: October 10 (Wed) 18:00 – 20:00
SCAI THE BATHHOUSE
6-1-23 Yanaka, Taito-ku, Tokyo
