Interview with Artist Unit Nelhor "How are you advancing the fusion of design and art?"

We focus on hearing from "successful promoters of expressive activities" across various fields.

Tanaka: As a graphic designer, I saw Iida's sculptures and wondered why a sculptor would incorporate such strong visual elements. That's what sparked Nerhol. When we met, the conversation expanded far beyond my expectations. I have a designer's perspective, while Iida has an artist's – completely different approaches. But what if we extracted only the common ground and merged our ideas into a single form? What would emerge? That's how it evolved into us creating work together. Incidentally, the unit name comes from Tanaka (neru, meaning "to refine ideas") and Iida (horu, meaning "to carve"), hence Neruhoru. When we exhibited our first work as a unit in 2007, people in the design world said, "This isn't design," while those in the art world said, "This isn't art." We simply thought combining our strengths might create something interesting, yet it ended up being neither design nor art. Feeling this was meaningless, we spent the next four years examining what design and art truly are, relentlessly creating works and experimenting. The culmination of all that exploration was the "Face" series we first exhibited in 2012.

Iida: It's a portrait that captures something unique to the person by using the time axis of continuously photographing them for three minutes. I take the stacked 200 photos and carve into them with a cutter to create raised textures. Tanaka handles the visual control of the overall appearance – that's our division of labor. We've photographed over 100 people so far, but the movements and fluctuations over those three minutes are completely different for each person. It's a portrait that archives the model's original movements.

"Scene to know / daily No.001"2013
©Nerhol Courtesy of YKG Gallery

Tanaka: This body of work was brilliantly interpreted in a positive direction, almost as if it chose its own path. Design professionals found it interesting from a design perspective, while art professionals appreciated it from an art perspective. Both design and art have their own unique contexts shaped by history within their respective categories. If you haven't cleared those hurdles, you won't be evaluated. Similarly, when people look at art, I think they can only judge it based on their own experience and background. We still want to reach as many people as possible, so we made it possible for all kinds of interpretations – flat art, drawing, sculpture, photography, performance – to be valid. It might be something that emerged over four years of experimentation.

Iida: The most crucial element that led us there, I believe, is "intensity." If a work possesses this intensity, I think it can resonate with many people regardless of genre. For the new "01" series (see top photo), it's based on the context of widespread internet use. I defined a single day as one term, printed out only the images uploaded to the internet within that 24-hour period, stacked each print individually, and then carved the binary digits of the internet—0 and 1—into them. This work embodies the concept of reducing every image uploaded on a specific day to its most fundamental form: 0s and 1s. I have a strong desire to inspire people worldwide. Westerners don't often engage in meticulous handwork with materials like wood or paper. Japan and China have a culture of Buddhist sculptors, with original techniques like meticulously shaping each blade to achieve its form. Within Japan, these unique values still remain, and they represent areas where we absolutely "can win."

Tanaka: Regarding future activities, I don't really think in terms of dividing the world into Japan and overseas. If invited, I'll definitely go overseas. If it means reaching more people, that's better. What's important for us going forward is figuring out what we truly want to do. I believe we should just keep moving toward our work.

Exhibition at Foam Museum, Amsterdam (May–June 2015)
Photo: Shinji Otani Courtesy of YKG Gallery