Founded by Tomio Koyama in 1996, the gallery represents both emerging and established artists from Japan and the world. It features Japanese artists such as Kishio Suga, Mika Ninagawa and Hideaki Kawashima, as well as international artists including Stephan Balkenhol (German) and Jon Pylypchuk (Canadian). Since 2001, the gallery has participated in numerous international art fairs. Besides the main gallery located in eastern Tokyo, the gallery has 2 more spaces in Shibuya (Tokyo) and Singapore.
Opening hours:
Tue to Sat 12pm-7pm
Sun 12pm-6pm
Closed on Mondays & Public holidays
Tomoko Nagai was born in Aichi Prefecture in 1982. In Nagai’s works, various motifs, animals such as bear, cat and horse, colorful trees and mushrooms, young girls or imaginary figures, are arranged in backgrounds of forest or room, as if they were theatrical settings. She employs various materials and creates paintings and installations that seem to address a condensed world while sharing a unique sense of space.
The following is what Nagai states about this exhibition.
“In daily life, we might encounter some moments that ordinary sceneries magically become dramatic scenes in a sudden. These happenings are like fate. It is a serendipitous conjunction of various elements, such as the time, the season, even our moods. For example, the moment when leaves fall all at once because of an unexpected wind and being surrounded by yellow. While producing the works, I wish I could condense those precious and dramatic moments in pictures along with my wishes and ideals, and form an exhibition as if it is packed in a vacuum pack.”
Around 10 paintings and 15 drawings of new works, which depict these miracle dramatic moments, will be on view in this show. In one of the gallery spaces, Nagai will also conduct an installation in which the space is like the realized world from her works.
Nagai has been involved in a project, in which she painted the walls of the swimming pool in a nursery school located in Shichigahama town, Miyagi, one of the stricken areas caused by the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in 2011 in Japan. The nursery building, which is currently being constructed, has been fully funded and supported by Singapore Red Cross. It is also a design by a Japanese emerging architect, Ippei Takahashi, which won the top prize in the proposal competition for Toyama Nursery in Shichigahama Town in 2011. (The construction will be completed in March 2013). The models and drawings for the project and two of the drafts Nagai drew for the swimming pool will also be presented in this exhibition.
share Email
