Kenji Sugiyama at Primo Marella Gallery
Premised on a 'meta-viewing experience', Kenji Sugiyama's illusionary maquettes prompt a rethink of the immersive. Small in scale and devoid of LED lighting, two universes awaited the curious who peered into the glass displays outside Primo Marella Gallery's booth.
The serene but crammed interiors of Cell—Inside of Myself 2 and 4 (both 2022) are built within small spaces that appear to reach back approximately a metre. An ornate library reveals itself from this restricted visual field, with hundreds of books scattered and stacked along shelves.
Abundant detail commands attention—from the covers of individual tomes to asymmetries between columns and arches and unruly shelves. Under soft light, the process of looking slows down, replicating the experience of sinking into a good book or getting lost in conversation.
Sugiyama describes his installations as containers for memory which unfold through his work like layers of a Russian doll: thoughts and experiences filed inside volumes accessed only within the self-contained space recall mental landscapes we can never fully articulate.
The eye gravitates toward the back yet remains unable to distinguish the exact boundaries of the artist's illusionary space. Something intimate and expansive unfolds, recalling the nature of thought itself, reaching out to be shared, yet self-contained.
