Japan

Naho Kawabe

Germany

Hamburg

Tom Reichstein Contemporary

Drawing

Untitled

These large-format sheets, called „Pits“ (pit, sandbox), are
a result of the Lockdown 2020, when international artists*
were thrown onto themselves in their work spaces. In the
„Pits“, Kawabe brings together many of the noted and
sketched ideas of projects that had been left undone and
unrealised, which she has kept in boxes, folders, diaries and
collections of notes since her student days. Yet the scenes
in these drawings are not arranged chronologically, but are
jumbled together like a kaleidoscope.

Painting

Phew... (red)

Phew... (green)

Under the title „Black and Green“, NAHO KAWABE shows new room-sized installations made of coal dust, object-like still lifes, reverse glass paintings, videos and works on paper. These large-format sheets, called „Pits“ (pit, sandbox), are a result of the Lockdown 2020, when international artists* were thrown onto themselves in their work spaces. In the „Pits“, Kawabe brings together many of the noted and sketched ideas of projects that had been left undone and unrealised, which she has kept in boxes, folders, diaries and collections of notes since her student days. Yet the scenes in these drawings are not arranged chronologically, but are jumbled together like a kaleidoscope.
Even in their temporal leaps, they reveal an aesthetically overarching concept that connects with the other works presented in the exhibition: a series of surreal-looking still lives shows dystopian situations in which technical set pieces of the present, books, people, animals, plants, fruits, are completely covered with a porous-looking layer of charcoal.
Partly „illuminated“ by lightless black light bulbs, Kawabe‘s laboratory-like arrangements seem like visions of an extremely uncertain future of life on our planet.
Next to them, Kawabe presents the fragile floor scatterings of coal dust with which she became known. With the ornamental and plant patterns formed from volatile dust in charcoal, Kawabe wants to „give nature, the trees, branches and leaves back their original form for a short time their original form“. Like a mirage, the floor objects exist only for the duration of an exhibition. (CM)

Naho Kawabe - Black and Green 

Naho Kawabe - Black and Green

Enter Viewing Room