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Shigeru Nishikawa, "under construction or destruction: layer and gap"June 4th - July 30th, 2022 taguchi fine art, tokyo |
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Shigeru Nishikawa was born in Gifu Prefecture in 1977. Withdrew from the Environmental Design Course in the Department of Civil Engineering, Faculty of Science and Engineering at Kinki University in 1997 and completed the Painting Course of the Osaka College of Art in 2002. In 2007 stayed in the U.S. for a year and assisted in the painting course at the Triform Camp Hill Community, a community for the disabled and able-bodied in New York State. He has had solo exhibitions in Nara, Kyoto, and Tokyo, and is currently based in Nara City and Kizugawa, Kyoto. Nishikawa has been experimenting with abstract expression using buildings and structures under construction, renovation, or destruction, covered with fabric-like sheets that suddenly appear in the city as the subject. These "Shield House" works are painted with bold brushstrokes that depart from realism and reproduction, an appropriate technique to the theme, that is, the fluidity of all things and their creation and disappearance. In this exhibition, two new series of works will be presented for the first time. The first is the "Layer" series, which is painted on a multi-colored striped background. The layers evoke the accumulation of time and geological strata. The second series, "Gap," is a development of "Layer," in which two canvases painted with different colors are horizontally shifted and joined together to be a support of the painting. "In contemporary Japan, new residential areas have been spreading in the suburbs, and high-rise buildings are growing in urban areas. As new buildings are constructed, the houses and places that existed in the past are forgotten, and the landscape keeps changing from time to time. How much will the contemporary situation continue to expand both horizontally and vertically in this way ? In Nara, where I currently live, there are buildings and ruins all over the place telling the past history and peopleÕs lives have developed on top of them. The temples, shrines, and ruins that have existed for hundreds of years and are still visible on the ground are the present, while the structures buried meters or even tens of centimeters under the ground are the past, as hundreds of years ago. I have heard that the city of Rome is actually overlaid on top of the old city, and that the medieval cityscape remains as it was in the underground. And, in the larger view, the history of earth is layered and remembered as geological strata. I have been representing the oblivion of buildings in the past and the transformation of landscapes in temporary enclosures as their ephemeral moments. And I am now wondering if it is possible to express these layers of time and changes that have been and will continue to be seen in the course of daily activities as their eternal flow. Just as a life that is born will die after a certain amount of time, buildings that have been and will be constructed will eventually be destroyed. And during construction (and destruction), the sheet covering the building will signify the interval between the oblivion of the former place and the newly created memory. What will people discard, what will they forget, what will they see, and what will they pursue in the future ? Behind the painted temporary enclosure, there is the changing landscape, the transformation of the world, the renewal of the present, and the future will continue." Shigeru Nishikawa checklist of the installation 1. Layer - Sealed Tower 4, 2022 oil and metal powder on canvas, panel 194.0 x 130.3 cm 2. Gap - Sealed Tower 1, 2022 oil and graphite on canvas, panel 153.2 x 146.7 cm 3. Layer - Sealed House 2, 2022 oil and metal powder on canvas 65.2 x 65.2 cm 4. Gap - Sealed House 2, 2022 oil and graphite on canvas, panel 153.2 x 129.5 cm 5. Layer - Sealed House 5, 2022 oil on canvas 53.0 x 53.0 cm 6. Layer - Sealed House 6, 2022 oil on canvas 53.0 x 53.0 cm 7. Layer - Sealed House 4, 2022 oil on canvas 65.2 x 53.0 cm 8. Layer - Sealed House 3, 2022 oil on canvas 65.2 x 53.0 cm 9. Gap - Sealed House 5, 2022 oil on canvas 103.3 x 79.7 cm 10. Sealed House 149, 2022 oil and graphite on canvas 41.0 x 31.8 cm 11. Layer - Sealed Tower 3 - Big Ben -, 2022 oil and metal powder on canvas, panel 145.5 x 97.0 cm 12. Sealed Tower 18 - Kobe Port Tower - , 2022 oil on canvas 65.2 x 53.0 cm 13. Sealed Statue 2 - Heiwa Daikannon -, 2022 oil on canvas 116.7 x 91.0 cm 14. Gap - Sealed Tower 4, 2022 oil and metal powder on canvas 79.0 x 55.3 cm 15. Layer - Sealed Tower 2, 2022 oil, graphite and metal powder on canvas, panel 91.0 x 60.6 cm |