…

“By making it symmetrical I confront the natural with the mechanical, the artificial. Architecture in itself is made entirely by people to be used and controlled by people. It is artificial. However, when people come and gather, it becomes like a city, a living organism and the situation transforms into something more natural. My works contain both those artificial and natural components. I’m attracted by the dynamism of the change from a simple form to a complicated organism.”

…

“Kazuhiko Kawahara AKA Palla is a former architect who uses photography, landscape and architecture to make compelling kaleidoscopic images. He could easily have a career based solely on his photography but pursues symmetry to find beauty in claustrophobic Asian urban settings. His work with Japanese landscape and the sea are firmly located within Japan’s artistic reverence for landscape, whether it be Zen gardens, landscape painting or Utagawa Hiroshige’s ukiyo-e whirlpool prints. Palla’s acknowledgement of urbanism recasts the late twentieth century attitudes of Japanese disgust with industrialization and development in a more productive and accepting light, allowing us to see the beauty in his complex, layered imagery of surging, vital cities.” by Shane Wiggs