Fujiko Nakaya’s misty sculptures. Photo: Pinault Collection
Nakai does not create an image of fog, but fog itself, writes the Pinault Collection (Bourse de Commerce, Paris). Using a system of high-pressure pumps and special nozzles, the rotunda’s space is regularly filled with tiny water droplets that form a dense white cloud. Visitors can move freely within the installation, disappearing and reappearing from the thick mist.
The work enters into a dialogue with the architecture of the building, which was renovated by Japanese architect Tadao Ando. The mist alters our usual perception of space: the outlines of walls, people, and interior elements constantly appear and dissolve, transforming a walk through the museum into an extraordinary visual experience.
According to curator Anne-Marie Duget, the artist does not simply use a natural phenomenon as artistic material, but creates conditions for a direct experience of its changeable nature. Fog simultaneously becomes both the object of observation and an obstacle to it, forcing viewers to look at the surrounding space in a new way.
Fujiko Nakaya is considered a pioneer of fog sculpture. As early as the late 1960s, she joined the international group Experiments in Art and Technology (EAT), which explored the interaction between art and technology. The artist presented her first large-scale fog installation at the World Expo in Osaka in 1970. Since then, she has realized dozens of projects around the world, and the high-pressure water atomization technology she developed has become the hallmark of her work.
Nakai’s works exist for only a moment and are never exactly the same. Their form depends on temperature, humidity, and air movement. It is precisely this ephemerality that has made the artist’s fog sculptures one of the most recognizable and unusual trends in contemporary art.
