Nobuhito Nishigawara

A strange hybrid of functionality and annexed figurative form, 'Cup 1' seems a particularly unstable and mutant reduction of the human presence, with the simplicity and quirks that are informed by Wabisabi. Nishigaware fixates on his dual nationalism, being Japanese born and US based, as a vehicle for appropriating a fluid understanding of cultural boundaries. The cup’s classical figure and semi-mythological hybridity connects to a contemporary timeline and an access to flux-like hives of disparate information, the blurred potential as vessel or art object creating something between.

Nishigawara reduces histories and artefacts of culture into interpretive vignettes, acting upon his curiosity in a contemplative and interpretive manner that often finds figurative elements reduced to shortened, deformed, or incomplete divisions of the body. The ‘Reclining Figure’ is a subtle example, the body of the female complete but curiously foreshortened. A use of burnished white porcelain and classically Western or European styling links with subtle Asian traits to downplay frames of reference and increase focus on aspects of beauty and eroticism.