Tatzu Nishi

Tatzu Nishi (西野達) is a Japanese site specific installation artist.

He has created and exhibited works under the pseudonyms Tatzu Oozu, Tatsurou Bashi, Taturo Atzu, and Amabouz Taturo.

Nishi is known for his art interventions, which often transform historical monuments by surrounding a statue or a small element of a building with domestic space.

In some cases the sculptures also operate as functioning hotels.

Nishi prefers doing his work outside of museums and galleries.

He chooses large-size projects to involve more people participating and being interested in art.

He has a preference for human-made or artificial nature rather than real nature.

He discussed the perspective that Japanese people might not have a strong inclination towards nature as reflected in traditional Japanese gardening practices like Bonsai or Shakkei.

The “act of thinking” peaked his interest in artificial nature.

Nishi was born Tazro Niscino in 1960 in Nagoya, Japan.

He studied at Musashino Art University, Tokyo from 1981 until 1984.

Later he moved to Germany and enrolled at Kunstakadamie, Münster.

The artist divides his time between Berlin and Tokyo.

Nishi created one of his first hotel installations in Aachen, Germany in 2000.

Titled Hotel Continental, the work consisted of a two-room hotel built around a classical sculpture of a horse by Gerhard Mareks.

The work faced the Theater Aachen, and was available for public viewing during the day and rental as hotel rooms during overnight.

In 2002 Nishi constructed a small one-room apartment around a wind vane on the rood of the Basel Minster Cathedral in Switzerland.

To reach the room, visitors had to climb scaffolding to a height of 40 meters.

Once they arrived in the room, they could sit at a coffee table that featured the cathedral's normally inaccessible spire as a table ornament.

The work could be booked in the evening as a hotel room, at the rate of 8000 yen (US$100) per night.

In one of his best-known projects, the 2002 Villa Victoria, Nishi built a functioning hotel with a single room around the large statue of Queen Victoria at the Victoria Monument in Liverpool.

The room included wall to wall carpeting, wallpaper and furnishings reflecting a five-star hotel.

At the center of the room was the imposing 4.42 m statue of Queen Victoria.

The work was created under the artist name "Tatsurou Bashi".

In 2004, he made a project called Café Moon Rider, in which he converted a freight container into a Café that functioned normally, except that he suspended it into the air by a crane, providing patrons with a panoramic view of Dublin.

In 2006, Nishi built a bedroom around the "Pyrotechnist", a statue of a man seated on a horse that is used as a brand symbol for the Tokyo Hermès store.

The piece, titled Cheri in the Sky was located on the outside upper wall of the store, at a height of 45 45 metres.

War and Peace and in between was a site-specific installation artwork in which the public sculptures The Offerings of Peace and The Offerings of War in Sydney, Australia were incorporated into domestic scenes.

The work was commissioned by Kaldor Public Art Projects and was on display from October 2009 to February 2010.

For the 2011 Singapore Biennale, Tatzu Nishi created a luxury hotel room around the Merlion statue, which is a well-known tourist attraction.

The room included full amenities and the guest's own butler during a visitor's stay.

The outside of the hotel room was painted maroon and had ‘The Merlion Hotel’ written alongside.

The room had a view that faced towards the Marina Bay.

During the daytime, visitors were allowed to see the inside of the fully-furnished hotel room that encased the head of the Merlion.

Nishi was the first guest who spent the night in the hotel and afterward allowed for the public to make reservations that cost SGD 150 (at the time) for two people.

The 2012 project Villa Cheminée featured a small hotel placed on top of a replica of a power station tower in Cordemais, France.

In Ghent, Belgium in 2012, he built an elevated hotel room around the clock tower of the Sint-Pieters railway station.

In 2017, Tatzu Nishi was selected for the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology’s Art Encouragement Prize in Japan.

Nishi has built public artworks, sometimes in the form of fabricated hotels and apartments, around historical monuments in Europe, Australia, Asia and North America.

As of 2018, the artwork continued to be operated as a hotel, being available for rental at the rate of 119 Euros per night.