Space and time collide as Kawai blends a futuristic space community, a 1960s hippie commune, and a surrealist fantasia.
Misaki Kawai’s whimsical installations are created from papier-mâché, wood, fabric, and other low-tech, “crafty” materials like felt, stickers, and yarn. With a quirky artistic style growing out of her earliest influences—her father was an architect and amateur painter and her mother made clothing and puppets—Kawai takes this interest in handicraft, adds her fascination with Western pop culture, and mixes it with an intuitive and architectural sense of space. What results is her mischievous vision of the world, one in which childhood dreams of doll houses and tree forts are realized through the eyes of a sophisticated artist.
Space House is an installation consisting of a multi-room home from which extends a series of additional living pods, all connected by a monorail. Like all of her installations, Space House is an energetic, somewhat haphazard creation, as the artist eschews meticulous or fussy construction, yet also extremely intricate in its level of detail. Peering into Space House, viewers are greeted by a miniature world full of endless moments to discover.