SingartWalking Through Time & Space
Nobushiro Nakanishi’s artworks are ephemeral in that they draw inspiration from what first got the impressionists going. But while painters back then, like Claude Monet, produced a series of paintings on the same landscape to capture it at dawn and dusk or spring, summer, fall and winter, a single installation by the Japanese artist consists of a series of translucent screens.
And each suspended in mid air and has a print of the same landscape, each slightly varied by virtue of being taken at a slightly different time on the same day. So, each frame becomes a memory that also reflects a very marginally different light.
These minute transitions in space, time and light can be enjoyed in real time when you walk slowly along the length of the Japan-based, Nakanishi’s installation; going pass delightful screen by delightful screen.
The whole experience is almost akin to peering into a phenakistoscope – an early animation device that uses the persistence of vision to create an illusion of motion. Only one better as the artist’s use of screens in tremendous proportions gives you the illusion of viewing the vast changing landscape a mere distance away from the grassy or sandy path on which you are pleasantly strolling.
The Eureka moment that morphed into this signature style draws its roots from photographs Nakanishi had taken of one of his sculpture with 35 mm films. These reversal films were overexposed when they were returned from the dark room.
Fortunately, all was not lost: he noticed that they gave an impression that the solid sculpture was floating. Thus they magnified his consciousness of the negatives in the space. This appearance of mise-en-abyme gave the distinct impression that he was looking at micro nega space through a microscope.
He immediately decided to put that together with his other theme – a sculptural experience centering on time, with a sustained focus on small objects on a table. For example, it could be a motif concerning melting ice-cream on a glass plate or a broken egg yolk that kept spreading outwards.
2 years later, his ambitions literally grew much bigger: he wanted to take all the changes of time around him into his work. Hence, he began to focus on landscapes with 24 layers of 35 mm films, completing 81 distinctive different kinds of installations in which we can immerse ourselves in. And we will get to do so at Art Stage Singapore 2014: Nakanishi will be exhibiting his “Layer Drawing – Cloud/Fog”, where the Japanese sky emitting eerie colours is the chosen motif.
We will find that the time intervals between adjacent screens are erratic as at the actual shooting, Nakanishi only presses the shutter each time the object changes. Moreover, he does not use all the frames he has shot. His aim is to create moderate forms through a series of screens and interspacing these with another series that give us a much more dynamic view of the same skyline. He strives not for what is objectively right. He strives to fulfill his own sense of vision – one that reflects how he was feeling when he was photographing this particular setting.
Little wonder then that the colours covering this sky have also been digitally enhanced: he does not believe that they have to reflect the actual hues. The exact shades to Photoshop have been decided after he had looked at each through a series of filters. Only then would he be satisfied that each screen becomes more realistically natural than the actual skyline he had initially captured.
Realism in this case is one that well reflects the Japanese people’s way of thinking about nature and life in a city; especially since the economy and technology have little changed since the big earthquake that rocked Japan in 2011 even though their mindset towards materialism has dramatically changed.
Nature is now held in greater awe. Yet, Japan continues to be besieged by nuclear power plant problems. “Layer Drawing – Cloud/Fog” expresses this border of conflict between human beings and something beyond their control.
Get into the renewed psyche Nakanishi and the Japanese people hold at Art Stage Singapore 2014. This exhibition will be held at the Marina Bay Sands Expo and Convention Center, Halls D, E and F from 16 to 19 January next year.
