MET MUSEUM

KOHEI NAWA by Andy Goldsborough

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Currently on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is Kohei Nawa’s PixCell-Deer #24. As part of the “Designing Nature, the Rinpa Aesthetic in Japanese Art” exhibit this work can be seen through January 13. I discovered Kohei Nawa’s work when Scai The Bathhouse showed him for the first time in March of 2004 at the Armory Show. I couldn’t leave without purchasing his 2003 work PixCell (Toy-Stealth) 2003. I was mesmerized by the dark stealth bomber plane captured inside this intricate assemblage of glass beads and to date it’s one of my favorite pieces in my personal collection.

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The scale and craftsmanship of the PixCell-Deer at the Met is worth the trip alone. Nawa completely transformed a taxidermied deer through various sized glass beads (PixCells), a term he invented. PixCell is the combination of cell and pixel, the smallest unit of a digital image. The sculpture was included in the current Rinpa show as it relates to a religious painting “Kasuga Deer Mandala”, which features a deer-the messenger animal of Shinto deities- posed similarly with its head turned to the side. Painters of the Rinpa school traditionally depicted the deer as a companion of ancient sages and had auspicious or poetic associations.

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Kohei Nawa Pixcell (Toy Stealth) 2003

Kohei Nawa Pixcell (Toy Stealth) 2003

For more information visit www.metmuseum.org and www.kohei-nawa.net. Kohei Nawa is represented by Scai The Bathhouse in Tokyo.