Nakazawa Hideki

Hideki Nakazawa Exhibition "Art Patents"

Gallery Cellar, Nagoya
May 7 - 28, 2005

Opening Reception: 6pm, Sat, May 7

pdf: [envelope]
pdf: [letter - front side]
pdf: [letter - back side]
pdf: [flyer p.1]
pdf: [flyer p.2&3]
pdf: [flyer p.4]

Dear Sirs/Mesdames,

      Gallery Cellar is pleased to present Hideki Nakazawa's "Art Patents" exhibition which will be held as stated below. Hideki Nakazawa, an artist, has principle patents on digital images both in Japan and the U.S. Seeing these patents as industrial materials and as art works at the same time, we will be exhibiting and selling his works through this show.

      As if form and color are the two principles of the art of painting, form and color are also the two formats of describing the digital images, the former being vector, and the latter being bitmap. In Adobe Illustrator as well as in other similar programs, the vector format is used, and in Adobe Photoshop as well as in other similar programs, the bitmap format is used. For example, the data of a photograph taken with a digital camera are in bitmap format. In the early 1990s, Nakazawa noticed that although these two formats were widely used in the world of 2D graphics, only one format, the vector was used in the world of 3D graphics. So he advanced the concept of "3D Bitmap," and invented its practical techniques in 1996. The theory is simple, where instead of pixels, which is known through digital photography, solid pixels (voxels) are used. Nakazawa claims that the contrast between sculpture and plastic clay in the plastic arts is comparable to 3D Vector and 3D Bitmap.

      The invention of 3D Bitmap Software was called "Voxel Data Processing Using Attributes Thereof" (US Patent Number: 6,144,384), and the invention of 3D Bitmap Printer (Solid Printer) was called "Solid Object Generation" (US Patent Number: 5,807,448). "Digital Nendo" (Digital Clay), which went on sale in 1996 from Ask Co., Ltd., was a 3D software directed by Nakazawa according to the former invention. However, because of the limitation of machine spec which was only able to handle very low resolution images of 32 cubic voxels, it was seen only as children's toys.

      After a long passage of time, this exhibition will now be held to become the beginning of the coming genuine high resolution 3D Bitmap era, which will be possible with today's machine spec. Therefore, these patents will be put on sale by way of securitization in order to stir up their effective utilization. Moreover, this exhibition has another aspect of being an ultimate conceptual art show by the artist who is pushing his way to the uncharted territory with his belief. In this case, dealing with patents means dealing with intangible concepts themselves, which will be the first experiment in the art world.

      This exhibition will be held simultaneously with "Hideki Nakazawa's Second Stage: Exhibition of His Silly CG From 1990 to 1996" held at the other space of the gallery. We are all looking forward to having you come and see them. Please contact us to learn more about our dealing with the patents.

The Exhibition Hideki Nakazawa Exhibition "Art Patents" May 7 - 28, 2005 at Gallery Cellar Wed - Sat 1 - 7 pm Opening Reception: Starts at 6 pm on Saturday, May 7 Related Event Explanatory Meeting "Art Patents" by Hideki Nakazawa * Guest: Jun Tsuzuki (illustrator) Starts at 4 pm on Saturday, May 21 at Gallery Cellar Simultaneous Show Hideki Nakazawa's Second Stage: Exhibition of His Silly CG From 1990 to 1996 May 7 - May 28, 2005 at Gallery Cellar [Introduction to the Inventor] Hideki Nakazawa b.1963, Japanese artist. Representative Director, Aloalo International Company, Inc.     He started his activities as an artist producing acrylic paintings while attending the Medical School of Chiba University, and began to win prizes and held solo shows. After graduation, he continued his artistic activities while working as an ophthalmologist, but in 1990, he switched to working with computer graphics and became Japan's first Heta-Uma (Bad-Good) style computer graphics illustrator. His cheap but pop style which was produced by using a 2D bitmap painting software became popular and was called "Silly CG." He won the MMA Artist Prize in the Multimedia Grand Prix '95, and his work has appeared in high-school textbooks on art.     In 1996, he applied for several patents by replacing and reconstructing the pixels in the world of 2D bitmap which he had been persuing with 3D, and made the world's first 3D bitmap software "Digital Nendo" (Digital Clay). In 1997, he further reconstructed pixels as abstract signs like letters, which allowed him to create a new style of painting, and moved on to become a fine art artist from a commercial artist. On January 1, 2000 he published "Methodicist Manifesto" with the presence of a poet and a musician, and called his works "Method Painting," and issued an email-bulletin "Method" which lasted through December 31, 2004. In 2002, he went to the U.S. with grants from the Japanese Government Overseas Study Programme for Artists. In 2003, he won the Premium Prize in VOCA.     His solo exhibitions have been held at Gallery Cellar almost every year since 2001. At the show "Hideki Nakazawa's Starting Point: Acrylic Paintings in the 1980s" held at the gallery at the end of 2004, his works from the 1980s were almost all sold out. His new works after the cessation of the bulletin "Method" will be presented at the end of 2005. He has written the books "Text on Modern Art History" in 1989 and "The Lives of the Western Painters" in 2001. He is now writing "Contemporary Art History: Japan" in both Japanese and English. Hideki Nakazawa's webpage: http://aloalo.co.jp/nakazawa/

jpg Review by Ayako Takahashi for Chunichi Newspaper (in Japanese)

txt Text by Hitoshi Takaoka (in Japanese)

to japanese
back