Naoki Kawano: Skins Concept

For Milan Design Week 2024, Paris-based contemporary artist Naoki Kawano was invited by Pierre Frey to create a special installation that would work in connection with their new line of furniture. The artist often uses colour, texture and shape to explore ideas in his work, which includes sculpture, painting, works on paper and digital art. After experimenting with various ideas, Kawano developed his “Skin Concept”, in which fragments of aluminium foil were crumpled and then pressed and painted in multiple colours to create a collage of varying forms, shapes and colours. Using a roller to press out sheets of foil, the surface takes on wrinkles, textures and imperfections, becoming a metaphor for skin itself. He explains: “The basic process involves pressing aluminum foil through a roller to create individual pieces. My exploration with aluminum foil began as an experiment, and I was captivated by the unique shapes that emerged by chance. This approach aligns with John Cage’s concept of chance operations. By simply pressing the aluminum foil, I allow a degree of randomness to shape the outcome. Each piece is unique and unrepeatable. The resulting shapes resemble continents, and their arrangement suggests borders. When layers of color are applied, the paint seeps into the creases and crevices, creating a rich texture. These colorful continents evoke imaginary alien landscapes.”

Pierre Frey’s in-house artistic team then transformed his ‘Skins Concept’ proposal into a line of wallpaper, fabric and textiles. For one carpet, the team decided to play with Kawano’s fascination with texture, and developed a carpet with various embroidered surface patterns using different colours and techniques. It has a very artisanal, handmade quality to it. There is also a printed carpet collection that reflects the material texture and nuanced colour of Kawano’s proposal. It is made with a highly resistant polyamide pile, specially designed for intensive traffic. In addition, the wallpaper, which involved a very meticulous process to achieve all of the intricate volumes and contrast in Kawano’s original work, shows the crumpled texture of the foil within the wallpaper, a poetic interpretation of his work.  “’Skin Concept’ is crucial to understanding my artwork, as it represents a high-level abstraction of my artistic approach. The initial idea for this project involved using multiple materials, including aluminium foil, candle wax, & coffee grounds, among others. Ultimately, I decided to focus on the “Folia” series, which utilizes aluminium foil, as the main concept for the project,” Kawano explains.

The Milan Design Week installation took place the garden of the Pierre Frey showroom in Milan’s city centre. Two rectangular box-like spaces were covered with Kawano’s ‘skins’. Inside featured the Pierre Frey wallpaper, while the exterior was a specially printed waterproof fabric, both of which showed two various colour tones. One was dedicated to yellow-tones, with bits of dark blue and green, while the other full of light blues and purples and red. Also inside were featured two new pieces designed by Guillaume Delvigne, a chair and a sofa, presented in a playful way, along with pieces from the new textile collection, including carpets and a curtain. The sculpture and sofa were covered with painted aluminium foil by the artist.

As Kawano explains: “Through this large-scale installation, I have come to realize the immense potential of the “skin concept.” It can be applied to everything around us, from small everyday objects to large-scale industrial products, even to natural elements, public installations, and urban sculptures. As an artist, I aspire to create projects that challenge and shake the viewer’s perception of reality.”

www.naokikawano.com

@_naokikawano_

www.pierrefrey.com

@pierrefrey