Fujiko Nakaya

As summer approaches, the Rotunda at the Bourse de Commerce will become a space of indeterminate contours, in which visitors appear and disappear in a thick, white fog of water vapour: a Fog Sculpture by Fujiko Nakaya (b. 1933, Japan) titled Cloud #07150.

 “Always working with a specific context, the artist has created an exceptional encounter between fog and the interior space of Tadao Ando’s Rotunda. Fujiko Nakaya does not depict fog; she sculpts it. This surprising artistic material is a natural phenomenon that she produces using a complex system of high-pressure pumps and rows of nozzles that release tiny water droplets that are identical to the ones that make up a fog. Natural in its composition and development, here it is artificially produced by the artist. Nakaya gave up painting in the mid-1960s to spend the following years focusing on a major experiment: the large-scale production of fog in spaces outside her studio. […] 

In 1969, in collaboration with the engineer Thomas Mee, she invented a ‘device/system to produce a cloud sculpture from water vapour’. While her research testifies to a heightened ecological awareness in her research, it also stems from a strong artistic stance that wants audiences to move through the work, so that they can both contemplate and experience it, to the explicit exclusion of any artificial chemical processes. Even to achieve just a partial mastery of this unstable, ephemeral, and constantly metamorphosing phenomenon requires knowledge of the physical laws governing the formation and dissipation of fog. […] 

The Rotunda at the Bourse de Commerce is a vertiginous space the upper two thirds of which are occupied by a panoramic marouflage canvas crowned by a dome. At its centre at the ground level, the concrete cylinder designed by Japanese architect Tadao Ando echoes the building’s circularity, remaining open to all possible viewpoints, both around and within the work. The fog, which is the main object of our gaze, thus also blocks our view, even momentarily. Its partial, fleeting transparencies create a kind of anti-panopticon that constantly destabilises and defies our capacity of observation. This is no longer a question of single or multiple viewpoints, instead of visibility itself. From a balcony on the first floor, a view overlooking the entire scene lets visitors contemplate a sea of clouds. Sculpting within the museum is also a way to travel within oneself...”
— Anne‑Marie Duguet

Excerpt from the exhibition catalogue