Tomio Koyama Gallery Roppongi is pleased to present Tomoko Nagai’s exhibition “Tube Pipes and Floral Patterns, Cat Stickers and Shell Necklaces.” 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.

Nagai’s worldview has won many fans both in Japan and abroad, and her works are in the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, among others. She has also been active in public spaces beyond the exhibition space, producing artworks for the NHK E-television programs “Sometimes Lost” and “Moyamoya,”, book illustrations for novels such as The Wise Man on the Hill, Tabiya Okaeri (Maha Harada, Shueisha Bunko, 2021), and the main visual for Kasumigaura Dōbutsu to Minna no Ie (Place for Everyone) (architect: Takahashi Ippei Office) that opened in July 2024 in Kasumigaura, Ibaraki Prefecture.

(For more information on the artist, please visit: http://tomiokoyamagallery.com/en/artists/tomoko_nagai/)

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

Nagai describes the current exhibition in the following way.

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“The title I have chosen for this exhibition is like some kind of magic spell.
Each one is a motif depicted somewhere in the painting.

I have made an effort to introduce a certain degree of abstraction into some of the works in this exhibition. As I painted, I realized that the abstraction in my mind was akin to a collection of scraps of fabric with floral patterns on them.

It seems to me that the style I originally espoused was similar to the act of joining various motifs together in a kind of patchwork. When scraps of fabric (motifs) with various patterns are joined together into a single piece, these scraps that were previously separate come together, and begin to take on the appearance of a kind of orchestra.

As a new method, I used a knife to spread and disperse the paint across the pictorial surface. The rhythm of the paint generated as I put each element where it belongs also gives me pleasure. Based on these specific motifs, I layered chunks and particles of paint broken down into fine pieces to create depth. I would be happy if viewers would take a look at that as well.”

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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.”

Weeping Cherry, a series of work depicting weeping cherry blossoms that Nagai paints every year, where the figure of the girl and the horse blend into the surrounding cherry blossoms, is her most abstract mode of expression to date. The materiality of the paint, achieved by making heaps of paint with a knife and creating multiple layers of particles, also has a certain appeal to it.

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.

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For press inquiries, please contact: press@tomiokoyamagallery.com (Makiko Okado)
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