When you have been creating art pieces for almost 30 years, it’s not easy choosing only a dozen to go into a solo show; but Kazu Nakagawa is doing just that.
For his first retrospective in the city, Here, Now at Trish Clark Gallery, Kazu is still choosing what pieces to bring.
“While I try to gather work I still reflect on how I change or how I don’t change,” he says.
One certain starter is a suite of five photos, printed on cotton-rag papers, taken by his father in 1959 titled Here, Now and No other world.
“My mother often talked about our conversation at the time,” Kazu says about a photo of him and his older sister aged 18 months and three respectively.
“My sister asked me ‘Kazu, have you ever thought about tomorrow?’ and I answered ‘How?’ I guess I couldn’t see anything but the present.”
He laughs and says his sister still thinks that about him, that he’s a man who lives in the here and now.
Another piece that will feature is the re-titled Cosmos. Originally named from place to no place, identity in 2015, the piece was a collaboration with local yoga-fashion designer Jyoti Morningstar.
“The idea was to make something that works for fashion,” Kazu says.
So on the six metre long fabric, he dipped his thumb in ink and printed it on about 108,000 times.
It is not the only piece about identity that will feature in the retrospective.
Born in Tokyo, Kazu immigrated to New Zealand in 1986 and started working on the island two years later with a strong focus on art.
Featured in the headland Sculpture on the Gulf multiple times and well-known on the island, he has employed many media as required as well as more evanescent materials, shade and sound.
Kazu’s exhibition Here, Now will run at Trish Clark Gallery in central Auckland from 15 August to 9 September. More information is at www.trishclark.co.nz.
• Emma Haas
