Kohei Nawa is one of Japan’s most renowned young artists
His work is marked by extensive research on innovative materials and by an aesthetic obsession: His outlook on molecular structures, on which all life is built.
Foam:
Small bubbles or cells that constantly form on the surface of a liquid similar to a soap.
Small bubbles or cells that constantly form on the surface of a liquid similar to a soap. They accumulate to form an autonomous structure, each bubble being conditioned to its cycle of birth and destruction, similarly to the condition of our own cells, which circulate, metabolize, and die.
Visitor at the Edge of the Foam Installation (2017-09-23/2017-11-12) by Japan House São PauloJAPAN HOUSE São Paulo
Strolling through this space is an experience
similar to walking on clouds, but clouds of organic matter, like the structures of our insides.
This idea, of the encounter between the imaginary landscape and the internal landscape, is disconcertingly innovative – and, if you consider that it results from simulation using industrial, chemical, and technological techniques in the hands of an artist, even more.
To portray the biochemical dynamics of living beings
and, at the same time, create a live simulation system that reacts to the stimuli inside it, is also a powerful feat of finding scales between the presence of the real world and the dynamics of the microscopic world.
Kohei Nawa is science fiction
His recipes are always unusual, and they are always at the limit of technical infeasibility.
He challenges the language he invented to expand the limits of the relationship that these disciplines can establish with art. It can be considered that Nawa belongs to the tradition of alchemist artists, who invented their own environment while making art.
Visitor Among Monumental Foam Formations (2017-09-23/2017-11-12) by Japan House São PauloJAPAN HOUSE São Paulo
On the other hand,
it is consistent with Japanese multidisciplinarity, which seeks ways to express innovation and research as vectors of artistic expression. Japanese art, even when conceptual, is always guided by the expression of the object.
Kohei Nawa turns strong concepts into objects that are sometimes tangible, sometimes intangible.
Visitor Facing the Expanding Foam Landscape (2017-09-23/2017-11-12) by Japan House São PauloJAPAN HOUSE São Paulo
The sublime part of his work
is in giving shape and image to the silent invisible molecules of which we are made. Opening that door to perception is like opening a telescope into our most vital origin.
Japan House São Paulo
Avenida Paulista, 52
Bela Vista – São Paulo/SP
Phone: +55 11 3090-8900
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