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Jo Nagasaka: Flat Tables

Gallery Libby Sellers presents in London the exhibition of Flat Tables series, developed since 2009 by Japanese architect and designer Jo Nagasaka.

Throughout the Flat Tables series Nagasaka explores his ongoing interest in finding modern solutions for abandoned objects through poetic re-purposing techniques.

The series takes found workstations and tabletops which are renewed through a layer of coloured epoxy resin in order to reveal and celebrate the textures of the woods, their time-weathered surfaces and the many narratives embedded in these cuts, scratches and abrasions.

The idea was first conceived for the Sayama Flat (2008) when Nagasaka and his colleagues removed the then-current flooring to expose a bumpy concrete surface, which, in turn, was transformed into a smooth floor by casting epoxy resin over the concrete. For Nagasaka, this circle of (re)invention is “design as renewing of knowledge”. As Stockholm based curator Ikko Yokoyama has written, “In this case, ‘renewing the knowledge’ means to notice something unseen before, i.e. how the colored liquid gradation reveals a history passed through the table’s surface which is twisted and scratched by time… The point [of] this project emerges by adjusting the dysfunctional to functional [in order] to reveal a story and create perceptional beauty.”