Tomoko Nagai “Tube Pipes and Floral Patterns, Cat Stickers and Shell Necklaces”
September 14 - October 12, 2024
11am-7pm CLOSED: Sun, Mon, National Holidays

This is the artist’s sixth solo exhibition at the gallery in six years, of new paintings that showcase new developments in her practice.

【On Tomoko Nagai and her artwork: making childhood memories, everyday moments, and dreamscapes resonate with each other like colorful puzzles】
Courtyards, plants, the seasons, the smell of the air, light, the universe, animals, stuffed toys, children, rooms…all of these motifs found in Nagai’s works are things she has always had in her mind, familiar from childhood, dramatic moments in her daily life, dreamscapes, and so on. She connects them organically with her own unique perspective and imagination, making them resonate with each other like colorful puzzles, and inviting them into a new and free painterly space where all of creation radiates brilliantly as “unknown spaces of comfort, and scenery that one would like to see.”
Nagai uses oil paint, watercolor, ink, colored pencils, and various other materials to express her multilayered sense of materiality and intuitive brushstrokes. Her approach is distinctive in terms of how it does not limit her modes of expression, which span a wide range from painting and drawing to sculpture and stuffed animals. Her works often take the form of squares, circles, and polygons, some measuring over 5 meters in size, while others remain small enough to fit in the palm of one’s hand. The variety of Nagai’s works seems to reflect how she enjoys the act of creation itself, capturing the world from free, flexible perspectives in close-up, or seen from a wide angle.

【On the exhibition and Nagai’s new works: tackling a new challenge with the abstraction of floral patterns and the materiality of paint】

The World Above Tube Pipes depicts the tube pipes that Nagai finds herself drawn to for some reason, with the “library of the world” on top of them. None of the portions of the surface of this painting takes centerstage. Rather, the painting as a whole, which resembles a pattern, represents a new kind of experimental attempt that Nagai painted as if she were “solving a puzzle that only she knows the solution to.”

A new editioned work called My Little Hairy (produced by HOW2WORK, Hong Kong, edition of 80) will also be exhibited and sold in conjunction with this exhibition.
Nagai continues to pursue the possibilities of artistic expression by capturing the brightness and radiance in this world that cannot be fully articulated in words, with an endearing perspective that is full of affection. We hope the viewers will take this opportunity to explore these most recent manifestations of Nagai’s worldview, overflowing with the gleam and sparkle of her paintings and sculptures.