Satoko Nachi’s large portrait occupies the space, and the artist’s rawly-exposed emotions approach directly into our hearts. The motifs depicted intricately on her large canvases are the artist herself, or her friends of the same age, but they evoke a divinity like that of the Holy Mother. Nachi remarks, “When I paint, the lonelier I am, the stronger I become. I do not feel loneliness.” Her work is born out of confronting the very depths of what lies within her own heart, and it embraces not only feminine elements such as purity and romanticism, emotions and fragility, but also the nature of human and universal pain and loneliness. Yet viewers may also sense the attraction of the internal nobility and beauty emerging from therein.
This exhibition features works that symbolize the settlement of a long relationship that had previously seized Nachi’s heart. The self-portraiture with a sense of self-assertion slipping away and of unstable anxiety serves as documentation of the artist’s development and change. With regard to technique, brushes have taken over from her previous medium of paint-compressor, and she has changed her touch to a more delicate one, seemingly flipping the paint in a form of pointillistic manipulation. She has also changed from acrylic to oil paint, remarking, “I started believing in painting more simply”. The exhibition showcases a new ground Satoko Nachi has reached within the development of her artistic practice.

There was always a specific person in the center of my practice.
I created in order for him to know my work.
My art was the only means for him to praise me.

“Good-bye and thank you for everything” is a work wherein I depicted the person whom I always wanted to meet. I thought it was him, but what actually appeared was something like a clear mirror.
Nobody can produce a human.
A mysterious person forgave me, and answered my seeking voice.
This person, who always understands and accepts me, and always stays with me, was my partner for life. When he left, I feel it taught me about a form of exchanging all the time that had passed until then.
– Satoko Nachi

Satoko Nachi was born in 1982 in Tokyo. She graduated from the Fine Art Department of Nagoya University of Arts. She currently lives and works in Aichi. This is her 3rd solo exhibition with Tomio Koyama Gallery, after one in Tokyo in 2010 and in Singapore in 2013. Her major group exhibitions include “Takahashi Collection 2014 Mindfulness!” (Nagoya City Art Museum, 2013), “JAPANCONGO” (Centre National d’Art Contemporain, Grenoble, 2011), “Children’s Art in Mie” (Mie Prefectural Art Museum, 2011), “Passion Fruits Picked from The Olbricht Collection”（me Collectors Room Berlin, Berlin, 2010, and “FLOWERS AND LANDSCAPE, Claude Monet and Young Japanese Artists” (Contemporary Art Museum Kumamoto, 2009). Her work created during her stay at the Ohara Museum’s ARCO project (as Artist in Residence in Kurashiki, Ohara) is being presented at the Ohara Museum from September 27th to November 27th 2016.please visit the following link. http://www.ohara.or.jp/200707/eng/4_info/data/001.html