Tomoko Nagai 2006-2018 “Atelier in Peach and Rose Color, Magic”
8/ ART GALLERY/ Tomio Koyama Gallery, Shibuya Hikarie 8F
May 2 – 28, 2018
Venue hours : 11am-8pm
Open everyday during exhibitions
Free Admission
Opening reception: Wednesday, May 2, 2018 6pm-8pm / Artist Talk 7pm-
http://www.hikarie8.com/artgallery/2018/05/nagaitomoko.shtml
In Tomoko Nagai’s works, various motifs such as animals, young girls, colorful trees and mushrooms are scattered against backgrounds of forests or rooms that appear reminiscent of theater sets. All of her works harbor a unique spatiality in which a sense of liveliness as if having condensed the world of fantasy, complexly overlap with the layers of the image. Nagai employs various media such as a sculpture and installation as well as a painting within her practice. This results in diverse matiere and levels of intensity that become elements and rhythms that together constitute a single musical score. In sensing this music, we as viewers unwittingly find ourselves entering the narratives of her work. This exhibition that marks the artist’s fifth time presentation at Tomio Koyama Gallery for the first one in three years, features works created since 2006 as well as a selection of her latest works. We invite viewers to venture into Nagai’s magical and dreamy world, conjured from her works that have been created in her cherished atelier.
The time I have spent in my Atelier is peach and rose colored, and is magic.
Matisse’s work “The Pink Studio,” is a work that I very much appreciate.
I have worked in several ateliers within the past 12 years and all have been precious places to me.
Presented are works that have been created as a culmination of many days, including works I made a long time ago. Of course, there will be a latest works as well.
I’m nervous but excited.
–Tomoko Nagai
Tomoko Nagai was born in Aichi in 1982, and graduated from Aichi Prefectural University of Fine Arts and Music in 2006. She currently lives and works in Tokyo. She has held a solo exhibition at Project N in Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery in 2008, and in numerous other cities including Kyoto, Kagoshima, Hong Kong and Singapore. A solo exhibition of her works was held at Roppongi Hills A/D Gallery in Tokyo in 2017. She has also participated in “VOCA 2010” at The Ueno Royal Museum, Tokyo, as well as international exhibitions such as “Future Pass – From Asia to the World” a Collateral Event of the 54th International Art Exhibition la Biennale di Venezia (Palazzo Mangilli-Valmarana, Venice, 2011), in addition to other group exhibitions in Seoul, Grenoble, and Berlin. Asides from exhibitions, she has also worked on a project in which she painted the walls of the swimming pool in a Toyama nursery school (designed by Takahashi Ippei Office, 2013) located in Shichigahama town, Miyagi, one of the disaster-stricken areas of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. Nagai has also created work for a TV program’s opening title on NHK. Her works are housed in public collections including The Takahashi Collection (Japan), The Olbricht Collection (Germany), The Zabludowicz Collection (UK) and The JAPIGOZZI Collection (US/ Switzerland).
I have organized this exhibition in hopes to present an overview of Tomoko Nagai’s works created over the past 12 years up until now, as an artist who has been working energetically since holding her first solo exhibition in 2007. Although solo exhibitions are usually an occasion to present an artist’s latest works, the artists themselves are indeed developing and changing year by year. It is my desire to look upon the progressive course of such changes, and I also contemplate showing the works of other artists in this manner in future. I hope viewers will enjoy Nagai’s exhibition, which marks the first installment of this new style of presentation. –Tomio Koyama