Profile

Kohei Nawa, born in 1975 in Osaka, Japan, is one of Japan’s most sought-after artists for his meticulously-planned sculptures and slick installations. As the youngest of three children to schoolteacher parents, Nawa studied at the Kyoto City University of Art, and counts the art of Buddhism and Japan’s native Shintoism as among his early influences. In 1998, Nawa studied at the Royal College of Art in London, where he was drawn to sculptors like Antony Gormley and his depictions of the human body.


His signature works to date have featured a series of taxidermied deer and other objects adorned with beads of crystal glass. To create them, Nawa painstakingly maps out where to place each sphere, studying how each reflects and distorts the textures of the deer’s coat. (“There is no arbitrariness to this method,” he notes in a catalog for his largest exhibit to date, “Synthesis,” at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo in 2011.)


Represented by Scai the Bathhouse, one of Tokyo’s top galleries, he has become a creative force here, his projects spilling over into the realms of architecture, fashion and retail. His “PixCell-Deer#24” is part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s permanent collection.


Recent Solo Exhibitions


2010 "Synthesis", SCAI THE BATHHOUSE ,Tokyo

2009 "Cell", GALERIE VERA MUNRO ,Hamburg German

"L_B_S", Maison Hermes 8th Floor Le Forum ,Tokyo

"Transcode", Gallery Nomart ,Osaka


2008 "TORSO", Nomart Project Space,Cube & Loft , Osaka

"The poetry of bizarre", Fundacio Joan Miro , Barcelona Spain

"PixCel", Pekin Fine Arts , Beijing China

2007 "PixCell", IERIMONTI GALLERY, Milan


2006 "GUSH", SCAI THE BATHHOUSE, Tokyo

AIR",Nomart, Osaka