A performance by Takashi Ishida and Nerhol took place on August 6, 2015, as one of the programs of the contemporary music event, “Music Today Tokyo.”

Takashi Ishida appropriates the technique of drawing animation, which consists in drawing lines and shooting them one frame at a time. In addition to interposing various mobile elements such as multiplying lines and moving points to produce installations that variously transform the quality of the space, Ishida continues to expand the possibilities that lie within the act of drawing through the creation of highly improvisational drawings. Nerhol utilizes photographed subjects and existing images from the Internet, which are printed and layered hundreds of times and ultimately distorted through a meticulous overlapping of delicate engravings in the support medium in an attempt to apply mystery to the memory and identities of various subjects in question.

On the night of August 6, which marked their inaugural performance together, five works were created as a consequence of an in-depth one-hour performance.

The performance involved a repetitive process in which Ishida produced a series of drawings that were then engraved by Nerhol and further assembled. Ishida had drawn various lines in correspondence to intonations produced through versatile movements of his body, and Nerhol engraved numerous layers of paper as if to suspend and expand Ishida’s recorded traces. Such works created through profoundly interlacing with one another, and at times as if observing one another, in addition to the porous traces present at the very moment of their conception, appear to approach the viewer as it continues to embody a sense of dynamism that is seemingly capable of generating further change.

In addition to the works produced through the performance, the exhibition features a documentation video of the performance, filmed by the filmmaker Yoi Suzuki.