Tomio Koyama Gallery Kyobashi is pleased to present Nana Funo’s solo exhibition, “I Can Go There. So Can You,” featuring the artist’s latest paintings.
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Matterport by wonderstock_photo
【About Nana Funo and Her Works: A New Lyrical World Where Motifs From Different Dimensions Delicately Intertwine Across Time and Space】
Funo elaborately and boldly develops her works as if sublimating the experiences, sensations, and emotions of her own life into a new world that transcends time and space.
A major characteristic of Funo’s work is the way in which she covers the initial image she has depicted with layers of paint and then paints over it with new motifs. The subtle interrelationships between these different hidden layers creates an elegant complexity. Of this, the artist states, “Things that existed long ago, things that most people no longer remember are sealed within the image, and these become the substance from which new stories arise.”
Her works seem to mirror the very structure of our world, where memories, stories, and times of the past overlay and intersect to form the present, and her process of working gives rise to a “a spatial complexity that cannot be captured in an expression of space in which images float or overlap.” (Mitsue Nagaya, “VOCA 2009” catalogue). Funo’s paintings have a lustrous texture reminiscent of porcelain or engraved metalwork, and a layered quality akin to embroidery or woven fabric, yet viewers will certainly be taken by surprise to learn that such effect is achieved solely through the meticulous and delicate brushstrokes of acrylic paint.
For more details on the artist: https://tomiokoyamagallery.com/en/artists/nana-funo/
【About the Exhibition and New Works: From Past to Present, to Future—“Encompassing Different Timelines”】
In creating her works for this exhibition, Funo expressed her interest in “encompassing different timelines.”
As with her new painting The Phases of the Moon, a number of circles can be observed in her recent works. While she had painted them subconsciously, she came to the realization that they may in fact be moons. From there, she consciously painted the moon, which shines its light while moving from place to place, repeatedly within the same image as if to “encompass different timelines.”
Fish Seed, Fruit Bones, and Things I Forget as Time Passes is a title inspired by her son’s verbal mistakes and reflects the artist’s desire to preserve the growth and precious memories of her young child—those bittersweet days filled with love—in their entirety.
Although both works depict similar trees, these are almost all “conceptual trees” inspired by the endearing round shapes of pine trees and mistletoe found near the artist’s home yet painted without any preliminary sketches and without actual observation.
Funo states, “Once I painted a pine tree, I found it utterly fascinating and I think I understood why it has been painted over and over again since ancient times,” and in her painting even captures the memory of walking beside these trees that have stood since long ago with her son, as well as the warmth she felt when holding his hand. Human activities and the blessings of nature, connecting past to present and future, come together to form a three- dimensional narrative world, and building upon her previous works of great depth, achieves further refinement, evoking an eternal passage of time, like the wind blowing through the trees, swaying their leaves and branches.
“Ever since I was a child, drawing and painting has been a natural part of my life.
I have repeatedly depicted the beauty and loneliness of the world, as if ruminating on them over and over again. It is through this that I have finally come to accept and affirm the fact that I am alive and am inevitably destined to die. Sometimes I feel the presence of something enormous and powerful, wondering why simply painting lines and applying color instills me with such joy and fulfillment.
Painting means the world to me.”
(Nana Funo’s artist statement, HARPER’S BAZAAR art no. 4, October 20, 2025 issue)
We hope visitors will take this opportunity to fully experience Nana Funo’s latest endeavors, as an artist who continues to create new painterly expressions based on an underlying view of the world, and by always remaining true to her own sensibilities.
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For press inquiries, please contact: press@www.tomiokoyamagallery.com (Makiko Okado)
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