“New Nature” brings together bubbles, fog and an autonomous mud-painting machine at Paradise City Art Space

A.A. Murakami’s first solo exhibition in Korea is underway at Paradise City Art Space in Incheon.

Titled “New Nature,” the exhibition runs through Feb. 10, 2027. Under the theme “Nature after Nature,” it presents installations that use technology to reconstruct natural elements and processes involving bubbles, fog and seashell patterns.

A.A. Murakami was formed in 2011 by Japanese-born Azusa Murakami and British-born Alexander Groves. The duo uses the term “Ephemeral Tech” to describe its combination of custom-built technology with transient materials that resist fixed form and quickly disappear.

The first floor contains two installations, “New Spring” and “Beyond the Horizon.”

“New Spring” takes the form of a 6.4-meter-high tree. Bubbles emerge from the tips of its 24 branches, fall and disappear. Although the mechanical system repeats the same process, the size, shape and movement of each bubble vary.

“Beyond the Horizon” uses fog and light to generate cloud-like formations. Fog-filled membranes rise into the air and burst, with their shapes and the distribution of light changing in response to air currents. The work was commissioned by Hong Kong’s M+ and first presented in 2024.

The second floor features “Mud Paintings: From ‘A Thousand Layers of Stomach’ Series.” According to the exhibition organiser, the new work is receiving its world premiere in Incheon.

The project began with a clam shell the artists encountered while eating miso soup in Tokyo. They interpreted the process through which a shell develops its pattern as a biological algorithm and translated it into computer code.

An autonomous mud-painting machine installed in the gallery moves across a surface according to the code, accumulating layers of pattern. In contrast to the temporary phenomena presented on the first floor, the machine’s repeated movements leave a material record on the canvas.

A.A. Murakami’s installations have previously appeared in group exhibitions and institutional projects in Korea, including presentations at Leeum Museum of Art, the Asia Culture Center, Hyundai Motorstudio Busan and Paradise City. “New Nature” is the duo’s first solo exhibition in the country.

According to the artists’ official website, their work is held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris and M+ in Hong Kong.

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Maria Kim sayart2022@gmail.com