Kohei Nawa

In his distinctive practice, Kohei Nawa uses glass beads, prisms, glue, plaster, and spray foam to cover found objects, such that their original contours become variously distorted and magnified. The artist explains that through this process, “the existence of the object itself is replaced by ‘a husk of light’, and the new vision, ‘the cell of an image,’ is shown.” Fittingly his most recent series is titled “PixelCell” (2009-), for which the artist has used taxidermy animals, including deer, cheetahs, rabbits, and coyotes. Nawa has also founded an artist collective space dubbed “Sandwich,” through which he takes on mutli-disciplinary design projects. In 2011, he was approached by Rei Kawakubo to design headwear for Comme des Garcons’ Spring/Summer 2012 runway show.