KOHEI NAWA

Nawa’s third solo exhibition with the gallery, “FORCE,” unfolds as a constant flow of liquid through the law of gravity. In the installationForce (2015), streams of black oil fall like rain to form a thick puddle on the floor. After carefully engineering its viscosity in the studio, the artist applies the material with rapid motion and creates an impression of solid sculpture. This tightly configured space induces a keen awareness that we are caught among time, space and materiality at every present moment. For Nawa, the white cube has been a site of enactment for primordial natural phenomenon using today’s synthetic compounds. This can be seen in eruptive bubbles of silicone oil as “LIQUID” (2003-), or a multiplied expanse of foam grown to an oppressive scale (Foam, 2013). The current installation extends the artist’s domain into an integrated concept following “GLUE” (2000-), drawings with a thermoplastic glue gun, and more recent Direction(2011) and Moment (2014-).

Direction is a series of acrylic paintings, in which the artist drips pigment ink from the upper edge of stretched canvas. These rhythmic and monochrome patterns are direct traces of liquid moving towards one direction and produces a stark visualization of binary code. ForMoment (2014-)— a physics term indicating force rotating around the axis—the artist deploys a pendulum device with a tank of pigment. The constructed device has a nozzle dripping ink and drawing an overlaying trajectory of circular swings. The line travels from one point to another, and every minute difference in air pressure or nozzle size deforms the line into curvature of unexpected variations. While the liquid is precisely measured and controlled within the mechanism, the artist introduces spontaneous intervention by instantly sliding the canvas to produce sporadic evidence of chaos. As the moment of force decreases, the pendulum slowly returns to the point of fulcrum - just as the physicality of our body is bound by the gravitational field.