Discursive Digression

2P Contemporary Art Gallery
Apr 10-May 19

In his latest solo exhibition, Berlin-based Japanese artist Yotaro Niwa uses a conceptual installation to challenge viewers' perception of spatial understanding and the process of art making.

'My research for the artwork focused on the production and dismantling process,' says Niwa, whose site-specific work incorporates maquettes or miniature models of inorganic material that he made in Berlin.

For the installation, the maquettes are 'repeated, distorted, overlapped and combined by unanticipated form and vision, so that I destabilise the viewer's perceptions and awareness of scale. And through this work I aim to supply people with an alternative vision of space and a new perceptional possibility'.

To achieve that, Niwa used bamboo and other natural or organic materials he sourced in Hong Kong to contrast with the inorganic and homogeneous surface of the small-scale models. '[The] bamboo and other natural materials are selected not only by the quality itself, but also by the correlation between the whole thing, because my installation is made up of resonance between various materials,' says the 38-year-old Niwa.

He adds Hong Kong's landscape inspires him, as it is made up of a mixture of natural and artificial materials.

'I aim to reflect this chaotic situation in my artwork. My work is a site-specific installation not only in the gallery space, but also connected to the city itself,' he says.

Born in Hyogo, Japan, the artist completed his master's degree in fine art and sculpture at the Musashino Art University in Tokyo before studying sculpture and interdisciplinary art at Hochschule fuer Bildende Kuenste Braunschweig in Germany. His work has been exhibited in various art spaces and galleries around the world.

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