Corpse 1993

Katsuhito Nishikawa made "Corpse" and it exists as a photograph of an arrangement in a space. It’s all angles and edges, this arrangement, this photo. The photo is mostly white, mostly blank. It’s like the opposite of trompe l’oeil, a space pushing into the actual space, not away from it. This work is so spare; so much about what isn't there. And yet the title, “Corpse,” is so loaded. It makes you look closer at the shadow, the dark shape within the rectangular opening. Is it a sculptural object, or is it just a shadow? Either way, it reads like a residue, or a remainder. It makes me think of Agnes Martin, but with a dark, almost gothic twist. Both artists are masters of reduction, but where Martin’s work is about lightness and transcendence, Nishikawa’s has a gravity, a weight. Art can embrace ambiguity and multiple interpretations. This piece reminds us that the simplest forms can hold the most complex ideas.