Ryoichi Kurokawa [JP] /// Subassemblies

-- ruins : the remains of human-made architecture --

“s.asmbli / subassemblies” is a project which pursues the relationship between nature and human-made through a perspective of architectural scale. This is translated in different presentation formats such as a concert piece, multiscreen installations, prints, VR and a screening version. Main sources of this project are 3d data by laser scanning of human-made architecture, ruins and nature, and those are distorted and reconstructed into each modules as subassemblies to create renewed timeline with layers of order and disorder while exposing force of both nature and art. Ruins, nature-invaded buildings and architectures in disrepair are superimposed and rebuild dynamically, and those unusualities rendered in multi-layered depth extends the perception of floating not only between nature and human-made, but also between abstract and concrete phenomena through its transition, destruction and renaturation. The motions such as cancellation of physical law, hybrid of natural and artificial components, and transposition of entropy and negentropy enhance those unusualities. Concert version ”subassemblies” is composed of single screen, surround lighting and 4.1ch sound system. “re-assembli” installation version is developed by re-plotting materials and build into space with 4 surround screens and 4.1ch sound. “in s.asmbli” is developed as alternative rendering as VR 360º piece and “s.asmbli [ wall ]” is another immersive cube projection with quadraphonic installation.

Japanese artist Ryoichi Kurokawa works with a wide range of mediums but is most famous for his audiovisual installations usually composed of multiple screens where abstract motifs suddenly appear from the dark and multiply or break away as if being microscopically dissected. These images and movements are paired with rippling, throbbing, swiveling sounds that feel as though they are coming from a deep place. The moving images that appear on the screen resemble outer space movements of particles, a process of complex chemical reactions, often seeming to be building up to an explosion. In some works, the motifs take on a more visually organic form, such as water streams or droplets that move across the screen. Kurokawa’s works visually translate the law of order in elements and the force of energy. Ryoichi Kurokawa is a true poet of the transformative cinema, lyrically transfiguring the analog representations of perceived nature into digital streams of vertiginous imagery & emotion. The architecturally crafted precision of his sensitively synched fragmentary images placed side by side on our retina, tends to displace the persistence of blurred memory under the effect of boundless luminosity. As can be viewed from his works, Kurokawa states that nature is his principle source of inspiration. All of his works lie in this notion of hybridization. Between analog and digital, but also between time and space, the full and the fragmentary, the simple and the complex, the reactive and the contemplative, the auditory and visual. Audio and visual concordance are key in Kurokawa’s works. He considers both the audio and visual element as different vectors of a unique piece and insists that they have to flow together to enter a collision at the same time. Some of Kurokawa’s significant solo and group exhibitions and performances include fluxes, K11 Select (China, 2018), objectum, Takuro Someya Contemporay Art (Japan 2018), Coder le Monde, Centre Pompidou (France 2018), The Dream Of Forms, Palais de Tokyo (France 2017), unfold, FACT (England 2016), Ordered Disorder, Espacio Fundacion Telefonica (Peru 2015), Turbulences, Espace Culturel Louis Vuitton (France 2012), One of a Thousand Ways to Defeat Entropy - The 54th Venice Biennale (Italy 2011), transmediale, Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Germany 2010), and Synthesis, Tate Modern (England 2007).