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Kazumi Nakamura Exhibition
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Artists
Kazumi Nakamura
This is Nakamura’s third solo show with the gallery and the first to focus on his works on paper, an aspect of his practice that he has rarely exhibited.
This exhibition puts Nakamura’s paintings on paper in dialogue with corresponding works on canvas, drawn from several ongoing series made since the 1980s. These juxtapositions reveal the sequential, iterative manner in which Nakamura paints, producing innumerable variations within a consistent compositional structure. Many of the paintings on paper are dated to the day they were made, offering an almost diaristic insight into the artist’s state of mind while at work.
This exhibition includes rare early examples of the Y-shape and Diagonal Grid series, which originated in the 1980s. The Y-shape refers to the symbol used to denote mulberry fields in Japanese cartography. For Nakamura, this formalistic interpretation of natural topography is loaded with profound personal and sociopolitical meanings, both evoking the trees that surrounded his family home and the historical decline of sericulture—an industry that his mother’s family had been engaged in until the 1960s. On the other hand, the geometric abstraction of the Diagonal Grid paintings is a reinterpretation of the diagonal perspectives seen in ancient Japanese scroll paintings. In contrast with the frontal, vertical-horizontal grids that characterize Western Modernism’s emphasis on the artwork as a self-contained autonomous object, Nakamura’s diagonal grids generate meaning by diverting the viewer’s gaze toward the outside of the composition.
This exhibition puts Nakamura’s paintings on paper in dialogue with corresponding works on canvas, drawn from several ongoing series made since the 1980s. These juxtapositions reveal the sequential, iterative manner in which Nakamura paints, producing innumerable variations within a consistent compositional structure. Many of the paintings on paper are dated to the day they were made, offering an almost diaristic insight into the artist’s state of mind while at work.
This exhibition includes rare early examples of the Y-shape and Diagonal Grid series, which originated in the 1980s. The Y-shape refers to the symbol used to denote mulberry fields in Japanese cartography. For Nakamura, this formalistic interpretation of natural topography is loaded with profound personal and sociopolitical meanings, both evoking the trees that surrounded his family home and the historical decline of sericulture—an industry that his mother’s family had been engaged in until the 1960s. On the other hand, the geometric abstraction of the Diagonal Grid paintings is a reinterpretation of the diagonal perspectives seen in ancient Japanese scroll paintings. In contrast with the frontal, vertical-horizontal grids that characterize Western Modernism’s emphasis on the artwork as a self-contained autonomous object, Nakamura’s diagonal grids generate meaning by diverting the viewer’s gaze toward the outside of the composition.
Schedule | Jun 5 (Sat) 2021-Aug 7 (Sat) 2021 Opening Hours Information
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| Fee | Free | ||||||
| Website | https://blumandpoe.com/exhibitions/kazumi_nakamura_tokyo | ||||||
| Venue | Blum https://blum-gallery.com/ | ||||||
| Location | 5F Harajuku Jingu-no-mori, 1-14-34 Jingumae, Shibuya-ku , Tokyo 150-0001 | ||||||
| Access | 1 minute walk from the Takeshita exit of Harajuku Station on the JR Yamanote line, 2 minute walk from exit 2 at Meiji-jingumae Station on the Chiyoda and Fukutoshin lines. | ||||||
| Phone | 03-3475-1631 | ||||||
| Related images | Click on the image to enlarge it |
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