2019 Catalogue Archive

Beginning in the 1980s alongside neo-expressionist painters in Japan, the US, and Europe, Tokyo-based Kazumi Nakamura set out to form his own theory of painting that is representational but non-figurative. Though divided into distinct bodies of work, his artistic output is, nonetheless, connected by his unique approach to traditional Eastern depictions of space, merged with elements of American Modernism, (Zen) Buddhist thought, and post-structural philosophy. His Broken Hermitage series focuses on the aftereffects of the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake (1995) and the Great East Japan Earthquake (2011), seen here in a work from 2018-2019. Jagged, thickly-applied lines vibrate and spiral around in the canvas creating a disoriented sense of depth, indicative of the physical and psychological instability caused by a natural disaster. Nakamura has exhibited his work throughout East Asia for the past thirty-five years, including solo museum exhibitions at the National Art Center, Tokyo; Iwaki City Art Museum, Iwaki City; and Sezon Museum of Modern Art, Nagano.