Untitled

An excerpt from the Aspen Art Museum Summer Magazine 2024:
Writing in 2019 for Tate Etc. about the French painter Pierre Bonnard (1867–1947), the critic Barry Schwabsky observes, “Bonnard’s was an art of flux. He eschewed the clear, well-defined forms of classical art to orchestrate a symphony of coloured blurs and smudges that only gradually add up to scenes of everyday life. Each patch of colour is, in itself, a distinct vibration, a different frequency, and, at the same time, each one communicates some- thing of its own inner motion to all the others, little by little, as the eye moves back and forth among them.” The interpretation feels pertinent to the work of Shota Nakamura; the resonances between his work and that of Bonnard and his fellow Nabis painters are strong. The stylization and use of color—at once bold and muted; the simplified forms and flatness that also recall the work of another earlier French painter, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (1824–1898). But in the subject matter, too: landscapes and gardens, domestic interiors and the two combined.

Nakamura grew up in the moun- tainous prefecture of Yamanishi, Japan, near Mount Fuji, a long way from rural France, but his dreamlike landscapes could be anywhere. Painting with oil on linen, there is a lightness to his touch, an ethereal quality that recalls the oneiric aspect of some of Peter Doig’s work. The figures themselves are like apparitions. Often sleeping, some- times reading, they are only partially present—their minds elsewhere, their bodies assuming a ghostly presence. Nakamura moved from Yamanashi to Tokyo to study art, before moving on to Berlin, where he continues to live and work.

About the artist
Born in Yamanashi, Japan, the artist currently lives and works in Berlin. He studied painting at Musashino Art University in Japan where he received his BFA in 2011.

Solo exhibitions include Clearing in Los Angeles, 2024, “Male Nudes: a salon from 1800 to 2021” at Mendes Wood DM, Blind, Morioka Shoten, Tokyo, Mai, grüner Wald, Gallery Trax, Yamanashi and Play Of Sunlight, AGORA Collective, Berlin. In addition, Nakamura has exhibited in a number of international group exhibitions Male Nudes: a salon from 1800 to 2021, Mendes Wood DM, Sao Paulo, Rose Is A Rose Is A Rose, Jack Hanley Gallery, New York and In Bloom, Belsunce Projects, Marseille.