The Paper Crane

Nadine Nakan­ishi is a painter and print maker liv­ing and work­ing in Chicago. She is one half of the print­mak­ing duo known as Son­nen­z­im­mer.  Ms. Nakan­ishi describes her inter­est between the two as a way to develop con­tem­po­rary dia­logue between form and color through prin­ci­ples of  tra­di­tional abstract expres­sion­ism. ” My biggest con­cern is over­com­ing ambi­gu­ity that abstract imagery evokes.” Says Nakan­ishi. “Clar­ity is my goal and reduc­tion is the means to accom­plish it.”

It is this sim­plic­ity that makes Nakanishi’s work so com­pelling. It is at once acute and sparse though not lack­ing in rich­ness and full­ness.  Nakan­ishi says, “sim­pli­fi­ca­tion allows me to de and recon­struct, cre­at­ing a space where form, tex­ture, line, com­po­si­tion, color and per­spec­tive are no greater part with out each other.” It is all this that invites rather than alien­ates in her work. It is plain to see that the inner work­ings of these ele­ments form right on the can­vas, paper or wood. Exper­i­men­ta­tion is her process and study.

I asked Ms. Nakanishi:

When you approach a new piece, do you start with the idea and begin to sim­plify in order to get to the real root of what you want to show?  Can you dis­cuss this a lit­tle? Does it become an emo­tional process or can you detach?

Yes, the idea is def­i­nitely the dri­ving force. That idea is sparked by inspi­ra­tion. Some­times it’s detect­ing pat­terns that are hid­den, some­times is think­ing of the vehi­cle of an abstract model, such as foot­ball. Is foot­ball so dif­fer­ent to dance? Is foot­ball a mov­ing infor­ma­tional table? Ana­lyz­ing it from an intel­lec­tual stand point usu­ally makes me look at form. Then it comes down to the exe­cu­tion. That can be a real strug­gle full of frus­tra­tion. It’s hard to hit the qual­ity you were envi­sion­ing. In this process, things get sim­pli­fied because you can’t pro­duce over your skill level or let’s put it this way, you grav­i­tate towards the solu­tion you can exe­cute. And that is exe­cute in a nat­ural man­ner. This step by nature strips your idea down to the core — mak­ing you ask your­self — what is the soul, the ambi­ent you want it to carry. Iron­i­cally, this part you can’t force. This is the part that hap­pens when work­ing through it. These are the strongest results, things build­ing in front of you. This is were my school­ing in typog­ra­phy comes very much to play. In design, they teach you in  “form and func­tion”. I have come to real­ize that good form holds func­tion regard­less of func­tion. If some­thing is beau­ti­ful the form works. This is school of thought that gets destroyed by art school, muse­ums and acad­e­mia. A mol­e­c­u­lar struc­ture works best in it’s best form. A beau­ti­ful sur­gi­cal scare also doesn’t cause issues later on (this is what I feel but kinda am quot­ing from Art & Physics ). It’s some­thing I also learned to explore in con­junc­tion with work­ing with Nick. He is some­one that really fol­lows his intu­ition. He always ends up cre­at­ing a form that speaks beau­ti­ful. Just using con­cept kills the intu­itive part. The best form is form that embod­ies intu­ition. That will make room for func­tion. In art, you aren’t con­cerned with this. But it’s this issue, that has to be under­stood. If you want to under­stand mod­ern art, it’s all about medium and form and redefin­ing that medium in it’s function.

Would you say then that each piece is a study?

I’d say it’s a more a tes­ta­ment in let­ting go of what you know.

Nadine Nakan­ishi also has a new port­fo­lio book that has just come out called For­mal Addi­tive Programs

Posted by Dee Clements on Saturday, November 28th, 2009 at 12:14 pm. You can follow responses through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.