Painting

Already in her early painterly work of the 1960s, Fujiko Nakaya focused on nature and its processes of transformation. She painted plants, cloud formations, or the sun, and used turpentine to dissolve layers of oil paint after their application. For Nakaya, this intervention conveyed that no state in nature is permanent, but is rather subject to constant change and becoming. But static two-dimensional painting had its limits:

“I used to paint clouds. I was a painter before, and l made paintings with clouds. And at a certain point l wanted a more direct experience-oriented form of art that painting couldn't provide. I felt unsatisfied with the painting as a medium and started thinking about working with temperature difference which is responsible for changes in a lot of forms of nature —in animals and in people and things. I made dry ice clouds on a plate with a heater underneath. So l was experimenting with the change of form through temperature difference.”