Nobuho Nagasawa

Stony Brook, Staller Center for the Arts, Recent Visions, September - October 2004

“I view art making as excavation of meanings - cultural geopolitical, social, personal - that lie hidden within materials themselves, as well as their uses and contexts.”  Nagasawa’s transparent glass hammers made of lead crystal function as ambiguous objects that lead the viewer to contemplate the use we make of the tools we create.  Conceived in Iraq, where the tool of language is said to have originated (Babylon, ca. 6000 BC), Con-fused Hammer #2 derives from an installation work in which the artist draws relationships between such commonplace tools and the tools of war.  As the artist states, “[Tools] determine and reflect the lives and histories of those who make them.  Art itself is a tool by which this complex situation is rendered ‘clear’ and open to further reflection.”