The Shower

“My work is always site specific, I’m interested in the site and location of a work and so on. I always visit the site in order to draw inspiration for ideas of my work.

My first impression of the Cloister was marked by the full natural light coming from the transparent covering. The light coming from above seems like a shower of light coming from the Chapel’s roof. In fact, the dome of the neighboring chapel is visible from insiede the cloister.

In that moment I recalled the painting by Gustav Klimt, Danae, in which she receives a golden shower from Zeus. The materials used in my installation are vegetable wood baskets used by people at the open market. These are very ordinary materials from everyday life.”       Tadashi Kawamata 

Tadashi Kawamata’s monumental installations are not designed to be immovable and can be considered as a nomadic trace that creates archaic structures that can be inhabited with natural elements retrieved among the local wastes. in the case of this exhibition, the materials are wooden boxes used in fruit and vegetables markets. ​

Kawamata has imposed himself at the attentions of the international critics with its ephemeral environmental installations, many of wich are huge, always respectful af the environment that welcomes them. 

With the installation made specifically for the space of the cloister of Santa Caterina a Formiello, titled “The Shower”, the artist wanted to recreate the feeling he had when he firste entered into the cloister and was hit by a sort of waterfall of light that seemed to come from the church dome. Presented in many countries around the world, Kawamata’s installations are part of a new way of understanding social art, an art that does not arise to be commercialized, allowig everyone to see it and that can alsobe benefited from the inside. ​

In the realization of its insallations Kawamata also involves locals, whose active participation contributes beyond the mere execution.While works are both conceived and studied by the artist, it is thanks to the negotiation with the locals that an artwork enters and becames part of their lives. In other words, Kawamata's works find their raison d'etre in the very collaboration of those who will materially create it with him, using materials that the environment itself provides them.