Dates: Apr 28 – May 28, 2005

Taka Ishii Gallery is pleased to present, “NU”, the gallery’s fourth solo exhibition with Japanese artist Naoto Kawahara.

Kawahara’s recent paintings are based on the works of masters including Balthus, Bonnard, Claesz, Düer and Seiji Togo. After staging and shooting his subjects with a Polaroid camera, Kawahara searches for other possibilities by re-creating them, by “painting” them closely. While keeping the master works characteristics, he makes us sense his uniqueness- through interpretation.

“This time, I have re-interpreted “painting as painting”. Mainly “re-envisioning”,- picturing mentally, the master works. My process is to gather the subject’s elements, re-shoot them and mold them during the involved process of [painting]. By translating existing paintings, I try to create another image of them. I will be happy if my works are not classified as just copies”.
Naoto Kawahara

Born in 1971, Kawahara lives and works in Tokyo. The artist trained at the Institute of Florence Lorenzo De’Medici, and has exhibited with Le Case d’Art in Milano. Kawahara’s style combines the Japanese painting tradition and contemporary Western and Eastern visual vocabularies.

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