The Sixth Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

144 Kohei Nawa Seeing is believing Kohei Nawa’s creations reveal ‘the uncertainties of reality between seeing and perception’. 1 Nawa’s works take various forms, from ink drawings to works made with materials such as silicone oil or polyurethane foam. But his most eye-catching sculptures, produced since 2002, transform pre-existing objects through the addition of a new surface layer of transparent glass or resin beads. In focusing on the outer layer, or epidermis, of things, Nawa creates poetic visions that draw from, and reflect, our new information society. Nawa is fascinated with how we gather information from our environment with the senses of sight and touch. To the sense of sight, everything around us is a series of light-reflecting surfaces, and everything we can perceive by touch is covered by some kind of skin. Nawa is acutely aware of how we identify with, and are made conscious of, the world at the level of these skins or membranes. He is interested in probing the interface between our senses and external objects, and how our understanding of the world is formed from this interplay. In realising his sculptures, Nawa undertakes a formalised process that meshes virtual images from the internet with real objects. First, through online searches using keywords, he finds an item and captures it as a digital image on a computer screen; he considers this the ‘first contact’ with the item. Describing his interest in this initial encounter with the image and how it changes with the physical reality of the object, Nawa states: I believe that the image one sees is different from the actual thing in many ways. The thing has a weight and an odour. By judging the thing at the image stage, one ends up rejecting its physical reality. 2 Once the object has been acquired and physically received, Nawa proceeds to the ‘second contact’ stage. After altering the appearance of the physical object through the transformative effect of applying glass and resin beads in various sizes, the object is presented as the third stage: a work emerging from, and informed by, the new order of the information society. 3 Here, the structure engages reality through the cyber world: in using the resin beads, Nawa tries to recapture the properties of the virtual image in physical form. In this context, each bead becomes a component in a project to recapture something of the original, pixelated computer image. Nawa calls the result a ‘PixCell’. 4 A way of intervening in or manipulating reality, the PixCell becomes a new kind of visual medium, another way to fix an image in time. Nawa likens the PixCell to ‘storage formats, such as JPEG or MPEG. All works that are added automatically become part of the PixCell world’. 5 In APT6, Nawa’s creation PixCell-Elk#2 2009 transforms the body of an elk purchased through an internet auction site. 6 Although this species ( Cervus elaphus ) is native to parts of North America and East Asia, it is found in other countries around the world, and this particular specimen — preserved through taxidermy — originated in New Zealand. The transparent glass and resin beads dramatically change our perception of the original creature. The surface of the animal is fractured, magnified and distorted through the images captured inside the spheres, transforming it into particles of deconstructed light that create an effect of enchanting effervescence. Viewed through this shell, the elk’s textures and colours are filtered through, and dissipated into, a myriad of individual surfaces, like the pixels on a computer screen. There is an overwhelming desire to touch the beaded structure to see if the beads will dissolve, like blown bubbles. The surface also conveys something elemental, organic or even fungal in appearance, as though the unfortunate creature has been consumed by some fantastic alien cellular organism. Nawa’s use of this medium has the effect of destabilising our sense of what is real and what is virtual. In Japanese Shinto belief, deer are considered to be divine messengers. Perhaps in the twenty-first-century world, Kohei Nawa’s PixCell-Elk#2 is a harbinger of a new kind of creative potential. Michael Hawker Endnotes 1 SCAI The Bathhouse <http://www.scaithebathhouse.com/en/exhibition/ data/060120nawa_kohei/>, viewed 6 August 2009. 2 ‘Interview with the artist’, Galerie Vera Munro, <http://veramunro.veramunro . webs.dwsa.de/getImage.php?file=pdf&type=lightboxpdf2&id=637 >, viewed 7 August 2009. 3 SCAI The Bathhouse website. 4 This term was devised by the artist from the words ‘pixel’, which is the smallest element of an image, and ‘cell’, a biological cell; ‘PixCell’ thus means the cell of an image. See ‘Interview with the artist’, Galerie Vera Munro. 5 See ‘Interview with the artist’, Galerie Vera Munro. 6 Researching ‘deer taxidermy basics’ on the internet, it is interesting to note that only the hide of the animal is retained (apart from the antlers), and this is stretched over an armature, usually a polyurethane foam mould. Paradoxically little remains of the original animal’s body, but we still very much perceive the object as the ‘real thing’. See <http;/ /taxidermy.13sales.com/deer-taxidermy-advice >, viewed 6 May 2009.