She doesn’t need much to completely change a room, an exhibition hall, or, as in the case of the Neue Nationalgalerie, a garden. Japanese artist Fujiko Nakaya creates her art from nothing but water and air. Artificially generated, her fine veils of mist envelope sculptures by Alicja Kwade and Henri Laurens (permanently installed in the garden). And although we’ve seen these sculptures before, with Nakaya’s intervention it’s like seeing them for the first time. On the hour, when the fog condenses over the meadow in a discreetly choreographed manner, slowly spreading and then gradually disappearing into the sky again, what is always there appears new or changed. The ephemeral installation changes depending on the time of day, wind and temperature, but one thing remains the same: the experience, which is more than just seeing. Whether it’s in the morning, when it opens at 10h and the air is still cool, or in the late afternoon. Regardless of whether it’s drizzling or the sun is beating down on the museum forecourt, Nakaya’s fog is something you want to feel again and again. Her sculptures are meditations on everyday life. Every puff of mist is a haiku hanging in the air.
Born in Sapporo in 1933, Nakaya has traveled the world with her installations since the late 1960s. She exhibited at the World Expo in Osaka and the Tate Modern, added a second layer of fog to the already foggy harbor in San Francisco, and covered the English Garden at Munich’s Haus der Kunst in a fine haze. The radical simplicity, the ephemeral, makes her work so beguiling you can’t help but lose yourself in them. Nakaya doesn’t need much. But their impact could not be greater.
Text: Laura Storfner / Photos: Neue Nationalgalerie, Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz, David von Becker
Neue Nationalgalerie, Potsdamer Str.50, 10785 Berlin–Tiergarten; map
Fujiko Nakaya: Fog Sculpture in the Sculpture Garden of the Neue Nationalgalerie until 14.09.2025
The sculpture starts on the hour between 10h and 17h.
@neuenationalgalerie
