As the exhibition title “Connecting with Lines and Giving a Name” suggests, in Nana Funo’s new work the motifs antagonize each other delicately, pair up and then part from each other, playfully inviting the viewers’ imagination. On a technical level she also employs experiments in material and technique, moving away from the carefully considered layering of material to simply follow her own sensations in using her media, enjoying the unexpected expressions brought by uncontrolled force. She adds color onto clear gesso roughly applied by a brush and scrapes it away afterwards,; she stops painting when her eyes are “pleased”, or she repaints the entire piece after painting it. Funo continues to draw daily in her drawing notebook, which has been a source of images since the beginning of her artistic career. It has become a receptacle of her motivations and any motifs she wishes to depict. As she explains she “becomes intimate with motifs as I keep drawing them”, the drawing notebook also plays a role as an implicit energy for the beguiling development of her tableaux. This exhibition features Funo’s new paintings, both large and small, of fantastic world full of stories woven with new expressions. Her new works also represent a change, in the form of her decision to continue making art all her life.
2 minute walk from exit 1b at Roppongi Station on the Hbiya or Toei Oedo line, 8 minute walk from exit 7 at Azabu-juban Station on the Nanboku or Toei Oedo line, 11 minute walk from exit 5 at Nogizaka Station on the Chiyoda line.
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