Shigeru Nishikawa “under construction or destruction 2020 Tokyo”
We visited Shigeru Nishikawa’s solo exhibition “under construction or destruction 2020 Tokyo.” The venue is Gallery OUT of PLACE TOKIO.
We visited on May 8, 2020, the opening day. The solo exhibition was held under the “state of emergency” declared in response to the novel coronavirus.
This is Nishikawa’s first solo exhibition at Gallery OUT of PLACE TOKIO in about two years. For a look at the previous one, please refer to the article below.
Shigeru Nishikawa’s ≪Sealed House≫ series presents oil paintings that depict, in a distinctive touch and palette, buildings covered by construction sheets — glimpsed around town in the midst of construction or demolition — as motifs, taking the “destruction and rebirth” of the urban landscape as their theme.
The main work presented this time, “Sealed House -New National Stadium-,”
depicts, against a background of the scrapped, imaginary design for the New National Stadium by Zaha Hadid noted above, the actual New National Stadium mid-construction — a real stadium that will surely become one of Japan’s icons going forward.
What led me to depict this was the realization that these two figures of the National Stadium — the real and the imagined —
become a symbol of our very existence: newly born (and dying), etched into memory (and forgotten).
I am now more convinced than ever that these two National Stadiums are the motif most fitting to the central concept of the series I have pursued for the past five or six years,
and are a motif that strikes deep into my identity as a painter.Shigeru Nishikawa
Sealed House 130 -new town- is a work that took shape as a group scene, depicting a residential development site in my neighborhood.
Walking around, I photograph buildings covered in construction and demolition sheets. Even on paths I know well, I sometimes gasp when a vacant lot suddenly appears.
I have passed by so often, and even though the lot is so large, I can no longer remember what was there before.
And soon it transforms into new housing, or into a large commercial store.
Even the fact that I forgot what once stood in that place is itself forgotten, and I come to feel at home there.
The memory of the new town, and the forgetting of the old.
So easily overwritten.Shigeru Nishikawa
Right: Shigeru Nishikawa ≪Sealed Gate Miyajima≫ 2020
Gallery OUT of PLACE TOKIO often has works installed in its back space as well. In this exhibition, too, we were able to see several works there.
Viewing Shigeru Nishikawa’s solo exhibition under the state of emergency declared for the novel coronavirus, the works in his ≪Sealed House≫ series struck me more deeply than ever.
