MUTATING ASTEROID

Brian Leo Projects
2021

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Mutating Asteroid, the installation at Brian Leo Projects, displays the series of works on paper from most recent Kawahara’s project Into Ultrablack, which began in 2012 in New York City. Inspired by UV, the word “ultrablack" indicates the imaginative crevice of absolute darkness as if we cannot see ultraviolet radiation. Imagining invisible presences that may exist within the dark, similarly, Kawahara observes ambiguity still presents in various binaries, such as eastern/western, nature/art, death/life, human/animal, male/female, organic/inorganic, reality/dream, and suchlike. The twilight surrounding these concepts overlaps with multiple narratives—such as the dark history of New York, leading him to generate cryptic imageries beyond the aforementioned various hedges. All works disclose the idea of darkness at multi-level; Animism, invisible presences, hidden phenomena, secret/prohibited/illicit acts, abnormality, for instance. They are installed and orbit around the exhibition space as if numerous asteroids in the universe.