Tomoko Kawai’s exhibition On the Origin of Springs is a thoroughly elaborated concept, that invites the visitor to trace perception strings, follow thoughts and discover connecting axes of rhythm and forms of life through photography, film and installation, always including movement and the body itself as a tool of under-
standing. Kawai’s multi-layered approach displays connecting perceptions by generating irregular intervals in the exhibition. Works on Japan’s Onogoro Island, Europe’s Rheinfall as well as Mori Ôgai’s filmed novel
Mai hime (1890) all offer different traces of the artist’s developing research on the axes of rhythm, forms of life and the bodily experience. An axis the artist most notably discovers in Berlin’s rhythmic imperfect and incomplete orders, ideally symbolized in a motive Kawai encountered on Karl Friedrich Schinkel’s Palace Bridge with its sculptures being surrounded by massive construction cranes. 

On January 18, starting at 8 pm, a performance by Akemi Nagao and Michael Tuttle will take place in Kawai’s installation.