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Lot Essay
One of the most iconic styles in Japanese contemporary art is superflat. Championed by Takashi Murakami, artists of this movement depict figures and scenes without three-dimensional rendering. The exceedingly cute character modelling is based on manga. These fantastic images further and further distance themselves from reality. On the periphery of this internationally renowned art movement, a young artist named Kohei Nawa started a new revolution of his own. With his innovative thinking and sculptural execution, he investigates the causal relationship between two-dimensional surface and three-dimensionality. It is a bridge that he endeavours to build between the virtual and the real in order present to the audience a visual impact that is beyond this world.
Kohei Nawa’s artistic output is diverse. It includes sculptures, installations, and paintings. Undoubtedly, his most memorable series has to be PixCell. By covering up the entire object with transparent spheres, Nawa is bestowing it with a shroud of light. This process renders the surface of the object into countless cells. Visually, they are akin to pixels - the most fundamental element in computer graphics. These spheres have become a layer of new cells that wrapped around the object. Nawa named this PixCell.
The first step in making PixCell is to find a suitable object. Kohei Nawa combs Japanese auction websites on the Internet to find animal taxidermies. In this process, he realised that the most commonly searched taxidermies are of deers. This discovery revealed the importance of deer in Japanese culture and history. Since time immemorial, deers are believed to be messengers of the gods in the traditional Japanese religion of Shinto. They are considered sacred. Deers roam freely in front of the Kasuga Grand Shrine, as they are loved and respected by the residents of Nara city (fig. 1). In the Kasuga Deer Mandala painting, deers are placed at the highest register (fig. 2). This clearly indicates their significance as subjects of worship. During the Edo period, artists of the Rinpa school painted deers as companions of saints or as auspicious creatures that have poetic connotations.
The subjects of PixCell are found on the Internet. Hence, they originated from virtual images that were digitally constructed on a computer screen. Kohei Nawa’s unique artistic treatment is based on physical objects being enclosed in real transparent spheres. These spheres of various sizes thoroughly cover the taxidermy. As a results, viewers must view the work through the myriad of refractions. This extraordinary viewing experience emphasises the depth of the gaze as well as the continuity in observing multiple layers of detail. Thus, viewers are guided to employ a new mode of seeing that inspects the interiority of objects. PixCell: Deer reminds us that regardless if it is the virtual space on the Internet or the reality in which we are physically situated, a fundamental ambiguity exists. Humans habitually perceive and investigate reality under this condition.
If we consider the material and structure of PixCell: Deer, it is apparent that as a three-dimensional work, it does not chiefly concern itself with traditional methods of sculpting and modelling. In fact, it follows the footstep of Duchamp by using readymade objects. By combining two readymade objects, Duchamp’s Bicycle Wheel creates new forms and meanings. Similarly, Picasso created Bull’s Head with the same logic. He emphasised the importance of the multiplicity in his work, “if you were to see only the bull’s head and not the bicycle seat and handlebars that form it, the sculpture would lose some of its impact”. Kohei Nawa perfectly highlights the characteristics of the taxidermy and the glass beads. These two materials combined to create an organic form that the world has never seen before. The glass beads altered the natural texture, colour, and form of the animal fur in a way that is similar to how Christo and Jeanne Claude wrapped the Pont Neuf in Paris with fabric (fig. 3). A glowing new life form emerges from the computer screen and materialises in the physical world. Its presence is both surrealistic and futuristic (fig. 4).
From the pixels on a computer screen to the glass spheres, and ultimately reaching the PixCell state, this work reflects worldview of Kohei Nawa. Anything that undergoes his PixCell treatment will be transformed into something that carries the same DNA. Animals, toys, musical instruments, and containers all have different physical compositions. Yet, they are all unified by Nawa, creating a universality in the physical world. Not only does Nawa guides the audience to contemplate on the relationship between the self and the universe, he also inspires infinite imagination of how new species will be created in the rapidly developing field of bioengineering.
Kohei Nawa’s artistic output is diverse. It includes sculptures, installations, and paintings. Undoubtedly, his most memorable series has to be PixCell. By covering up the entire object with transparent spheres, Nawa is bestowing it with a shroud of light. This process renders the surface of the object into countless cells. Visually, they are akin to pixels - the most fundamental element in computer graphics. These spheres have become a layer of new cells that wrapped around the object. Nawa named this PixCell.
The first step in making PixCell is to find a suitable object. Kohei Nawa combs Japanese auction websites on the Internet to find animal taxidermies. In this process, he realised that the most commonly searched taxidermies are of deers. This discovery revealed the importance of deer in Japanese culture and history. Since time immemorial, deers are believed to be messengers of the gods in the traditional Japanese religion of Shinto. They are considered sacred. Deers roam freely in front of the Kasuga Grand Shrine, as they are loved and respected by the residents of Nara city (fig. 1). In the Kasuga Deer Mandala painting, deers are placed at the highest register (fig. 2). This clearly indicates their significance as subjects of worship. During the Edo period, artists of the Rinpa school painted deers as companions of saints or as auspicious creatures that have poetic connotations.
The subjects of PixCell are found on the Internet. Hence, they originated from virtual images that were digitally constructed on a computer screen. Kohei Nawa’s unique artistic treatment is based on physical objects being enclosed in real transparent spheres. These spheres of various sizes thoroughly cover the taxidermy. As a results, viewers must view the work through the myriad of refractions. This extraordinary viewing experience emphasises the depth of the gaze as well as the continuity in observing multiple layers of detail. Thus, viewers are guided to employ a new mode of seeing that inspects the interiority of objects. PixCell: Deer reminds us that regardless if it is the virtual space on the Internet or the reality in which we are physically situated, a fundamental ambiguity exists. Humans habitually perceive and investigate reality under this condition.
If we consider the material and structure of PixCell: Deer, it is apparent that as a three-dimensional work, it does not chiefly concern itself with traditional methods of sculpting and modelling. In fact, it follows the footstep of Duchamp by using readymade objects. By combining two readymade objects, Duchamp’s Bicycle Wheel creates new forms and meanings. Similarly, Picasso created Bull’s Head with the same logic. He emphasised the importance of the multiplicity in his work, “if you were to see only the bull’s head and not the bicycle seat and handlebars that form it, the sculpture would lose some of its impact”. Kohei Nawa perfectly highlights the characteristics of the taxidermy and the glass beads. These two materials combined to create an organic form that the world has never seen before. The glass beads altered the natural texture, colour, and form of the animal fur in a way that is similar to how Christo and Jeanne Claude wrapped the Pont Neuf in Paris with fabric (fig. 3). A glowing new life form emerges from the computer screen and materialises in the physical world. Its presence is both surrealistic and futuristic (fig. 4).
From the pixels on a computer screen to the glass spheres, and ultimately reaching the PixCell state, this work reflects worldview of Kohei Nawa. Anything that undergoes his PixCell treatment will be transformed into something that carries the same DNA. Animals, toys, musical instruments, and containers all have different physical compositions. Yet, they are all unified by Nawa, creating a universality in the physical world. Not only does Nawa guides the audience to contemplate on the relationship between the self and the universe, he also inspires infinite imagination of how new species will be created in the rapidly developing field of bioengineering.