For Fujiko Nakaya, fog possesses the unique quality of rendering invisible what is normally visible—in this case, space itself—while simultaneously revealing what usually escapes our perception, such as the movement of air. Fog materializes space, affirming that it is not empty. The work also highlights architecture as an interval—the Japanese concept of ma—a space of relationship between beings and things where the question of emptiness is never raised, but rather space is designated as the zone of connection between the beings that inhabit the world.
Conceiving her work as a “conversation” with natural elements over which she has no control, particularly the wind, Nakaya artificially recreates the natural composition of fog using a system of pumps and nozzles that spray water in the form of microparticles. Thus, “Cloud #07156,” created specifically for the Rotunda, forms part of the legacy of this project. To create the fog, Nakaya employs high-pressure pumps and diffusers. Pressurized water is released through a small hole in the nozzle and strikes a needle positioned above it. The water fragments into droplets twenty to thirty microns in diameter, the same size as those that make up natural fog.
Fujiko Nakaya states that her fog sculptures could also be described as "atmospheric sculptures." Comparing her works to "conversations with the wind," the artist conceives of her work as a dialogue between the fog she creates and the conditions of its exhibition: the wind outside, the air circulation, and the movement of the public inside. She conceives of the work not as an object, but as a changing experience that reflects the impact of time and space on the sculpture.
Generally installed outdoors, these "fog sculptures" have been adapted by the artist for museum spaces on several occasions. This precise anchoring in space is evident in the title of the work, Cloud No. 07156.
Fujiko Nakaya's work also engages in dialogue with Tadao Ando's concrete cylinder. Ando, too, considers his work as "the search for a state in which architecture and nature coexist, while simultaneously clashing violently." By conceiving of architecture as the creation of place, Tadao Ando seeks "to create structures where the transience of nature and the passage of time are transformed into a personal experience of space." The wall he has erected within becomes a stage for the sun's passage through the Rotunda, its changing light bearing witness to the arrival of summer in the building. His cylinder, which in a way forms an oculus, both conceals and reveals the architecture that precedes it. By allowing a natural phenomenon to erupt within a man-made structure, Nakaya's mist sculpture highlights the fundamental qualities of Tadao Ando's design.
“Always starting from an existing context, the artist has created an exceptional encounter between fog and Tadao Ando’s Rotunda, in an interior space. Fujiko Nakaya doesn’t represent fog, she sculpts it. This surprising material is a natural phenomenon that she produces with the help of a complex system of high-pressure pumps and rows of pipes that emit microdroplets of water identical to those of fog. Natural in composition and development, it is artificially produced by the artist. When she abandoned painting in the mid-1960s, it was to embark, years later, on a series of ambitious experiments: the large-scale production of fog, now in a space other than her studio.
The Rotunda of the Stock Exchange is a dizzying space whose two upper levels are occupied by a panoramic brown period canvas, crowned by a dome.” On the ground, at the center, the concrete cylinder by Japanese architect Tadao Ando doubles the circularity of the building, remaining open to all possible viewpoints, both around and within the work. The fog, the primary object of the gaze, can thus serve to block the view, albeit temporarily, acting as a kind of anti-panopticon capable of obscuring observation, permanently challenging it through ephemeral and partial transparencies. The question is no longer that of the viewpoint—whether single or multiple—but that of visibility. From a first-floor balcony, an elevated panoramic view allows visitors to contemplate a sea of fog. Sculpting within the museum also allows for an inner journey.”
Anne-Marie Duguet, Arts and Media Historian.
“Fujiko Nakaya's sculptures invade clearings, public spaces, riverbeds, forests, valleys, museums, and art centers with their shifting mass. They overflow, flooding and absorbing these spaces in a mist carefully arranged by the artist and heavily reinforced with automated and digitized pipes, pumps, and valves.
Each appearance of the artwork involves detailed observation of the site's weather conditions: humidity levels, wind direction and strength (or air currents), atmospheric temperature, and the density of human presence all influence the behavior of the propelled water particles (each artwork is titled with the code of the nearest weather station).
Each appearance of the Mist Sculptures offers anyone who "visits the exhibition" more than a (constantly deceived) glance, but rather an experience: losing oneself in an incessant generation of forms that cancel one another out, moving blindly within an unpredictable sequence of varying degrees of opacity.
When she presented her first fog sculptures in Osaka in 1970, Nakaya was not alone in exploring the indeterminate and unstable nature of forms. But there was nothing obvious about her radical take on an excursion beyond the frame. For the most demanding of modern artists, being modern was not simply about emancipating oneself from representation, but about confining oneself to the dimensions of the painting or the wall, limiting to its surface the interaction of the processes that constitute the work.”
Patricia Falguières, Professor of Art History and Theory at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS), Paris.
