TAB Event - Kohei Nawa "L_B_S"

The next exhibition at Le Forum will be new works from the rapidly rising artist Kohei Nawa. Since his first exhibition in 2000, Nawa (born 1975) has garnered attention both at home and abroad for works of alluring material presence and accomplished plastic beauty. In 2005, the artist designed window displays for Maison Hermès.

We cannot speak of Nawa's work without mentioning ideas of "skin" and "cells." In his well-known PixCell series, the "skins" of objects such as taxidermied animals, sneakers, musical instruments, toys, and fake fruit assume phases never seen before. Membranes of countless transparent glass beads form a new interface between these things and us. Permeating the familiar material reality of his subjects, these cells　derail the ingrained tactile memories and conventional visual notions we have of these objects.

This exhibition will afford Nawa the opportunity to present his trademark materials on a large scale. The title is an acronym for LIQUID, BEADS, and SCUM, which represent the three phases of growth for Nawa's cellular skins. The first indicates the fluid maternal space out of which cells bubble forth; the second refers to the glass beads affixed to and mediating the objects; and the third describes the transformation of cells, having reached their limit, into replicating and expanding residues. Each work arises as its skinlike interface undergoes its particular metabolic changes, a process　which, thanks to the artist’s formal intelligence, results in art of　overwhelming beauty.

With our brains drowning in a sea of information, we gradually become numb to own　bodies. Alerting us to the envelope of skin that enfolds us, Nawa’s works make intense appeals to our senses of sight and touch. Imbued with the physicality of the artist’s　direct confrontation with his materials, they become devices to reawaken bodily feeling.

[Image: ©Nobutada Omote, Courtesy of the Hermès Foundation]