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In post-earthquake Japan, many Tokyo art museums, out of a sense of respect, have felt a heavy social burden to be humble, even invisible, in their exhibition programming. This is a time of restraint—from canceling fireworks festivals, to saving electricity, and the dramatic drop in tourism—and this is reflected in the various exhibitions that have been in doubt, or cancelled or scaled down, since the March 11 tragedy.
Despite this, Tokyo is still full of art. ‘Synthesis’ at the Museum of Contemporary Art has not been affected by recent events, except for perhaps slightly shorter opening hours. The main concept behind Kyoto artist Kohei Nawa’s body of work can be contained within art-historical walls, in a manner of speaking, and has little chance of offending with its themes or ambitions. This mid-career retrospective showcases a still relatively up-and-coming contemporary artist dedicated to immediate visual engagement through sculpture. As the title suggests, Nawa’s many series of sculptures are brought together in a form of synthesis to examine an overall theme of human perception of the sculptural form.
Nawa is an artist particularly dependent on the art museum format to get his theme across. While he has a deep interest in more recent visual technologies, with mention of data and pixels and internet shopping in his artist interviews, he expresses this theme almost entirely through the timeless tradition of sculpture. Nawa exploits the unique combination of audience engagement alongside the inherent physical detachment, which is cultivated in a typical art museum environment. Nowhere is the act of looking at things made so ceremonious as inside an art museum. In most art museum displays, perception is purposely limited to what the eye can