Hidetoshi Nagasawa

The idea that the work must take on body and soul in a close relationship with the environmental context is certainly of fundamental importance to Japanese artist Hidetoshi Nagasawa. It must come into being through a meditated and careful strategy of involving the space, aesthetically activated by the staging of installations, elaborated to a greater or lesser degree, which are made up of elements that maintain their primary expressiveness and function above all as catalysts and generators of unprecedented physical and mental tensions. The singular aspect of this artist’s work – his highly original dialectical synthesis of “western” operational methods (linked to the poor art process) and orientally based cultural and philosophical values – is a dimension that has always been characterised by a sense of suspension and lightness, a sober and refined elegance in the plastic constructions which bring into play various materials such as wood, stone, marble, iron and other metals such as copper and brass, with variously articulated depths and conformations which also include the presence of living plants. Francesco Poli Hidetoshi Nagasawa was born in Tonei, Manchuria in 1940. After his graduation in Architecture and Interior Design at the Tama Daigaku in Tokyo in 1963, he moved to Milan and came into contact with Castellani, Fabro, Nigro, Trotta and Ongaro. in 1992 he took part in the 9th Documenta in Kassel and in the 1993 Venice Biennale with his own room in the Padiglione Italia.