“Nakanishi Katsuo: A Device for Gazing Slowly and Remaining Forever” (National International Art Center) Opening Report. Strength Hidden in Unstable Paintings
A retrospective exhibition of Katsuo Nakanishi, a representative postwar Japanese painter, has opened at the National International Art Center, showcasing the strength found within his unstable paintings.Summary
A retrospective exhibition of Katsuo Nakanishi (1935-2016), a leading postwar Japanese painter, titled “Nakanishi Katsuo: A Device for Gazing Slowly and Remaining Forever,” has opened at the National International Art Center in Osaka. The exhibition will also tour the Yamanashi Prefectural Museum of Art, the Saison Museum of Modern Art, and the Ibaraki Museum of Modern Art. Nakanishi, while working as a painter, was also a member of “Hi-Red Center” and engaged in performative activities. He continued to question horizontality and parallelism in painting. Curator Takafumi Fukumoto interprets Nakanishi’s paintings through the keyword “instability,” focusing on the ambiguity of his colors, the rolling oval shapes, and the elusive themes of light and time in his later works. Sachiko Nagamatsu of the Ibaraki Museum of Modern Art also discusses this instability in the exhibition catalog, referencing discussions by Yusuke Namiki, Kunihiko Uno, and Michio Lin. The exhibition invites viewers to explore Nakanishi’s pursuit of painting while keeping this theme of “instability” in mind.
(Source：美術手帖)