Following in the footsteps of Mariko Mori, many Japanese artists are questioning the frontier between vision and perception by creating a delicate dream world. Kohei Nawa (Osaka, 1975), with his drawings, sculptures and installations, plays with the perception of the world and invents objects imbued with a strange poetry. Projecting images on water, covering articles with glass beads, invading the space with gigantic molecular forms, he transforms the original state of an image, an object or a space. Kohei Nawa transcends banality and transforms something ordinary into something exceptional, metamorphosing bits of junk, a cigarette end, a piece of fruit or a stuffed animal into extraordinary, precious objects. He often buys the most outrageous articles on the Internet, and then covers them in transparent glass beads to give them a new skin. Catching the light, these beads create a magical vibrancy around the pieces.
Moving away from the delicacy of the beaded objects to invasive, tentacular sculptures, Kohei Nawa fills the exhibition space with polyurethane foam structures that spread out and create monumental forms.
For his exhibition in the Espai 13, the artist will be producing a series of works in situ.
Exhibition organised in collaboration with SCAI The Bath House, Tokyo.
