“Echo” by Akiko Nakayama
The grand finale of the exhibition, Akiko’s Nakayama’s newly commissioned installation Echo explores the delicate interplay between water, sound, and mineral light. In a petri dish, water droplets drift and vanish across the surface in response to sound vibrations—an ephemeral choreography projected in real-time onto a large screen. Rooted in Nakayama’s background in painting and performance, the work extends her ongoing exploration of what she calls "alive painting" —a practice that merges organic material, color, light, and motion to reveal the invisible forces shaping life.
In this piece, shifting mica and quartz particles catch and refract light, echoing the vibrant liveliness of Bvlgari’s masterful convertible sautoir-bracelets—crafted in gold and set with amethysts, turquoises, citrines, rubies, emeralds, and diamonds—from the Bvlgari Heritage Collection (c. 1969), also on view in this room.
As with her broader practice, Nakayama offers a perspective that cherishes time, where each droplet becomes a portrait of life’s fleeting yet radiant essence. The installation becomes a space where art, nature, and physics converge in luminous, ever-changing form.