Cavin-Morris Gallery is pleased to present its second exhibition of works by Yohei Nishimura. In the previous exhibition we showed his kiln fired books brought to their barest skeletons of shape. Words and ideas had disappeared yet they still maintained the essential identities as books. In this exhibition, Nishimura finds a blending point between enamel bowls and fruit fired to its bare essence, forced into a graphic relationship with the enamel bowls. Here are some of his comments.
âThe inspiration for this work came after my visit to the British Museum, and I saw âcarbonized riceâ. It fascinated me that even after thousands of years, organic material such as rice had continued to exist.
Ceramic work is where fired clay turns into a hard solid form like a rock. The firing process in creating ceramics generally takes several hours to a day at a time. However, in nature, it takes thousands of years for a piece of clay to turn into a rock. In ceramics, we speed up the natural process to alter the material form.
For this exhibition, I have fired fruit. If we leave these materials as is, they will decay and lose their current form. However, by firing these fruits I prevent the fruits from decomposing, and I sustain their form.
The fruits were placed in an enameled bowl and fired together. In this process, I was able to create and observe a new relationship/interaction between the fruits and the enameled bowls. The fired fruit left the outside shell and maintained their form, but the fruit flesh completely melted. In a white bowl, this melted fruit flesh leaves a trace and simultaneously creates multiple lines in the bowl. There were no lines before the firing, but the process of firing bowl and fruit together creates lines. Each bowl then has a different set of lines. No lines are the same. It is like observing the heritage of each bowl.
An apple and a bowl - one is organic, and the other is not. Yet, with human input, the nature of that relationship will begin to show us a new vision of where the organic and inorganic merge. â
We will also show some of his fired books.
For further information, please contact Shari Cavin or Mimi Kano at info@cavinmorris.com or 212 226 3768.
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