34 hong kong tatler. august 2019
CONCIERGE / Art
Balance of
Power
With an exhibition under way at Pace
Gallery, Kohei Nawa discusses his
obsessions: tradition, technology and
artificial intelligence
BY OLIVER GILES
Japanese sculptor Kohei Nawa is an artist of the 21st
century. He’s obsessed with artificial intelligence. He
uses Twitter. His Kyoto studio is packed not with clay
and carving knives but with iMacs loaded with the 3D
modelling software he uses to shape ambitious, futuristic
sculptures, many of which can only bebuiltwiththe
help of machines that mould materialsinways
human hands never could. But when Nawa
talks about his art, it becomes clear that
it’s about more than technology—it’s
about tradition.
“The Japanese culture is very
philosophical and it is a very
important source of inspiration for
me,” says Nawa. “I really respect the
wonderful skills of craftsmen, whose
practices are also ways of thinking
and ways of living.”
This mix of the old and new can
be seen in one of Nawa’s most famous
works, a dazzling 10.4-metre-tall golden
throne that was suspended above visitors’
heads in the Louvre’s glass pyramid fromJulylast
year to February this year. “Created withreferenceto
the forms of festival floats and portable shrines that appear
in the rituals and festivities of the East, Throne fuses
today’s 3D modelling techniques with gold leaf techniques
that date back to ancient Egypt,” says Nawa.
Beyond that, Nawa was using
this classical symbol of power
to question contemporary life.
“Systems of absolute values used
tocolour the lives of large numbers
ofpeople under the rule of royalty or
monarchy, but such coherence is now
rare,”hemuses. “However, the progress
ofcomputersand artificial intelligence is
accelerating, and if they reach the stage where they boast
absolute intelligence, society and whole nations are likely
to blindly follow them. This work attempts to express that
premonition as an immense, floating, vacant throne.”