Year: 2015
Medium: Mixed media : Glass beads, taxidermy, aluminum
Dimensions: 134 x 56 x 72 cm (52 3/4 x 22 x 28 3/8 in.)
Acquired from Phillips, 2022
Kohei Nawa is best known for the Deer of his “PixCell” series. Among many of Nawa's works, PixCell-Deer are his signature art pieces and have attracted high acclaim and popularity. These artworks are currently held and displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, and other institutions in Japan and abroad. Deer have been historically considered sacred animal in Japan because they are “messengers of the gods”. Nawa himself publicly stated that it is a representation of the deer as a “sacred beast in his “White Deer” artwork. In addition, the commentary at the Metropolitan Museum of Art also points out the possibility of resonance between “PixCell-Deer” and the “Kasuga Deer Mandala,” a type of Japanese religious painting. If we reconsider the role of the beads from this perspective, they can be interpreted as the circle of the sun. Since the sun is regarded as the sacred mirror as well, the viewer is constantly confronted with his/her own sight through the reflection of each bead. The beads that covered the deer by “countless sunlight” are the physical boundary that separates the human world from the nonhuman world, and at the same time, serve as a spiritual barrier.
