Rei Naito is among the best-kept inventive secrets and techniques in Japan. With disarmingly easy supplies, from pebbles to balloons to picket collectible figurines, her installations generate profound experiences of the interconnectedness of the world. Rei Naito: come and reside—go and reside is one among her most bold exhibitions but, conceived for 2 venues. Its first half occurred earlier this yr on the Tokyo Nationwide Museum, the place Naito labored with prehistoric artefacts to point out how even probably the most seemingly inconsequential objects have unimaginable tales to inform. At Ginza Maison Hermès Le Discussion board, Naito has responded to Renzo Piano’s glass-brick structure by creating an set up that modifications look over the course of the day. If the museum might be seen as a mausoleum, Naito seeks an “immersion in life” within the ephemerality of the modern artwork house. In a uncommon interview, she opens up about her extraordinary artwork follow.
Rei Naito has created an set up at Ginza Maison Hermès Le Discussion board responding to Renzo Piano’s constructing Naoya Hatakeyama/Courtesy Fondation d’entreprise Hermès
The Artwork Newspaper: Though your installations initially look minimal or empty, it takes time to see them. Within the first room on the Tokyo Nationwide Museum, totally different particulars emerged from the objects as one’s eyes adjusted to the dimness. At Le Discussion board, sure parts disappear as pure gentle provides approach to synthetic gentle. Do you ever consider your self as working with time?
Rei Naito: Time, house, pure phenomena, the individuals there (in thoughts and physique), the work. These are indivisible, coincidental entities for me. It’s inconceivable to take all of it in as quickly as you step into the work. Some belongings you sense steadily with the actions of the dwelling individuals within the house. Others can’t be sensed until the whole lot remains to be. And the expertise of the house shifts each second within the altering gentle all through the day. Whoever is there comes away with their very own distinctive expertise of the house.
I get extra of an actual sense of life from the surprising “animas” that emerge out of that form of indeterminacy or potentiality than when the whole lot is evident. Not having the ability to know the world in its entirety and simply being there as an “anima” together with all the opposite “animas” enveloped by your complete world—that’s our expertise of the world itself, which is a superb pleasure to me.
In your Tokyo Nationwide Museum set up, the clay impression of a kid’s foot from the late Jōmon interval (2000BC- 1000BC) is a profound assertion of how artwork derives as a lot which means from unfavorable house, or absence, as optimistic illustration. What attracted you to this object and the way does it connect with the opposite works?
The very first thing I felt was sympathy for the particular person, most probably a guardian, who made the impression of the lifeless little one’s foot and wore it as a souvenir till their very own loss of life. Then I realised that that footprint was left by an individual with a thoughts and a physique—a life that was really as alive as I’m now. Was there any approach for me to have a real sense of that life? I stored asking myself this query. Sooner or later I occurred to put the item within the daylight and the shadow of the footprint instantly appeared earlier than me, whereas on the identical time I might see my very own shadow proper beside it. For the primary time I used to be in a position to get a visceral sense of that little one who had stood, walked and lived on the identical earth as me. Bathed in the identical daylight because it was then, that footprint continues to exist alongside my shadow within the house of the work.
You might be identified for making work that originally look clean earlier than steadily revealing totally different colors, reminiscent of your colour starting (2020-) collection of acrylic-on-paper works. Your new colour starting/breath (2023-) work use color extra immediately. They resemble palette assessments, summary compositions and landscapes unexpectedly. Are the 2 collection associated? What does color imply to you?
The 2 collection have utterly totally different motivations. The colour starting work are about discovering the “second that color manifests itself”. In distinction, colour starting/breath is about emptying my thoughts so as to face “scenes of life on earth”. In 2022, after I was getting ready for a solo exhibition at Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich, I got here to the realisation that each the dwelling and the lifeless have a eager for “scenes of life on earth”. As soon as I recognised that it’s human nature to have this longing and to wish to depict these scenes, I gave myself permission to make landscapes, although the preliminary concept was to color with none intention. To me, color is life.
Matrix (2010) harmonises with nature on the Teshima Artwork Museum Photograph: Ken’icyhi Suzuki
You typically compose poems that accompany your works. One poem for the present exhibition reads, “Might life be life, / and its presence permeate the realm of the dwelling / Might loss of life be loss of life, / and its presence permeate the realm of the dwelling.” Is writing poetry a part of your thought course of?
Poetry results in inventive creation for me, and my poems are as essential to sustaining my life as my artwork is.
Many individuals describe visiting your Matrix (2010) set up on the Teshima Artwork Museum as a deeply meditative expertise. Do you consider your self as making an attempt to create non secular experiences via artwork?
I’m not acutely aware of my works as non secular experiences, however like anybody else I do have a way of the world or nature as being one thing that far surpasses the human realm. Together with awe, I additionally discover pleasure in that information and wish to categorical my gratitude for it.
• Rei Naito: come and reside—go and reside, Ginza Maison Hermès Le Discussion board 8-9F, 5-4-1 Ginza, Chuo-ku, till 13 January 2025
