G A L L E R I A I L P O N T E arte moderna e contemporanea
via di Mezzo 42/b - 50121 Firenze – tel. e fax 055240617 - www.galleriailponte.com
press release
HIDETOSHI NAGASAWA
INTERFERENZA
Site specific sculpture
and
works on paper
organized by
LAURA VECERE
8 October – 31 December 2005
GALLERIA IL PONTE – via di Mezzo, 42/b – 50121 FIRENZE
open: 4/7.30pm – closed Sunday, Monday and holidays
INAUGURATION: Saturday 8 October 2005, 6pm
CATALOGUE: photographed, 30x21.5cm, 35 pages, 12 colour reproductions. Text by Laura Vecere, biography by Susanna Fabiani, Edizioni 'Il Ponte', Florence.
The Il Ponte gallery inaugurates the autumn exhibition season with a show dedicated to the transnational artist - Japanese by birth, occidental by adoption - Hidetoshi Nagasawa.
Since the sixties, Nagasawa's modus operandi has been to create works in situ, i.e. 'in' and 'for' their setting in an intimate dialogue between environment and sculpture and between work and space. Now, for the upper room of the gallery, he has created a site specific sculpture entitled Interferenza. This comprises a square chestnut beam, 30cm across and 1100 cm long, made in two parts which join and lock at the centre, supported at both ends by another beam, each of which leans in the opposite direction to the other. These keep the first beam about a metre off the floor in a magical equilibrium of opposing forces, which seems to render this enormous suspended element weightless.
The exhibition continues in the lower room in a series of refined productions on paper (one of the artist's favourite means of expression which he often uses as an actual medium for sculpture) which intersect in relational games, criss-crossing between full and empty, light and shade, with strips of glued-on copper. Sometimes there is a splash of colour, which, from the natural acid of the copper, spreads over the paper in variations of blue-green. This compact nucleus of works, dated 2004-2005, is produced on paper of a 100x70cm format, with one larger sized, 210x300 cm, composed of nine modules.
Press office: Susanna Fabiani (): catalogue and photographs available on request
Intereferenza, 2005 – wood, lead and tempera, 133x1200 cm (photo:model 1/15)
Senza titolo, (Untitled) 2005 – copper collage on paper, 100x70 cm
Biography
Hidetoshi Nagasawa was born in Manchuria (his Japanese parents had moved there because of his father's work as an army doctor) on 30 October 1940. During the war, when the Soviet Union attacked, the family fled to Japan and settled near Tokyo.
During these difficult war years, Nagasawa went to high school, where he became interested in contemporary art, especially in avant-garde groups (Neo-Dada) and in particular, discovering the work of the Gutai group (he admired their creativity and freedom of expression through their Azioni and the novelty of language - an idea can be expressed using any means - which contrasted with the traditional academic culture of the Japanese artistic environment) and visited their recurring Independent Expositions organized in the Tokyo Museum by the Yomiuri News Paper until 1964.
In 1963 he graduated in Architecture and Interior Design and afterwards worked in the design office of a large department store and then in an architects' studio.
In 1966 he began his bicycle journey - a major event in his life and for his art - across Asia, visiting Bangkok, Malaysia, Singapore, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Persia, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey. From East to West, from Greek to Italy, from Brindisi to Naples, Rome, Florence and Milan where in 1967 he concluded his once-in-a-lifetime adventure (according to Zen: don't think about your destination, but treasure each experience to reach deep within yourself, which for the artist is exalted by practising Art).
In Milan during the sixties there was a stimulating artistic climate (the work of Manzoni, Fontana and later Arte Povera), which influenced Nagasawa who moved to the working-class area of Sesto San Giovanni, where he came into contact with artists like Castellani, Fabro, Nigro, Trotta, Ongaro. He formed a special friendship with Fabro.
During 1968 Nagasawa worked continuously, producing Solidi di plexiglas, Oggetti manipolati, Azioni in the countryside of Lombardia. The same year, he took part in the Art Festival of Anfo, Brescia, together with the Gruppo Torinese (Marisa Merz, Getulio Alviani, Nanda Vigo). In the early seventies he had his first personal shows in Milan (Gallerie Lambert, Toselli), Rome (Gallerie L’Attico, Arco d’Alibert) and Turin (Galleria Christian Stein) in which his direction emerged within Conceptual Art, from video to words, conceived as a visual element, engraved on metal plates. During this period he created real sculptures using gold, marble and bronze.
In 1972 he took part in the XXXVI Biennale of Venice and developed a significant working relationship with Ardemagni of the Milan gallery, Arte Borgogna, who edited the catalogue of the exhibition held by Nagasawa during the same year at Basil, the Internationale Kunstmesse Art 3 ’72, with texts by Pierre Restany and Gianni Schubert.
During the next twenty years the artist achieved renown for a huge as well as varied production in terms of theme (the impression of the body, space, time), medium and material (wood, iron, wax, paper, bamboo).He rediscovered the value of manual skill and his sculptures expanded on a spatial scale, becoming creations of 'places' (recurring subjects: homes, rooms, doors, walls, fences, boats, screens).
References to oriental culture abound: the theme of the journey as a movement between different realities, the delicate equilibrium in his works between the visible and invisible, the materiality of the sculpture which becomes light and transparent, are the decisive elements in the language he adopts.
Later, there were national and international, personal and collective exhibitions in public spaces: 1978, Florence, Palazzo Strozzi; 1982 and ’88, Biennale of Venice, Galleria Comunale d’Arte Moderna, Bologna and private shows; 1981, Galleria Sperone, Turin. There then followed Documenta in Kassel (1992), the Biennale of Venice (1993) - with monographic room in the Italian Pavilion - the International Exhibition Centre of Tokyo (1995, Giardino delle Sette Fontane, the first garden created by the artist), Fattoria di Celle in Pistoia (Iperuranio) and Fondazione Mirò in Palma di Mallorca (1996, Jardin), Palazzo della Triennale in Milan and Palazzo Pretorio of Certaldo (2001, Giardino della casa del té), Palazzo delle Stelline in Milan (2002), Il Caffè Letterario in Modena (2003), the Galleria Arco d’Alibert (2004), the Nuova Pesa in Rome (2005).
His work is also on show in many public and private collections in America, Belgium and Japan.