Kyohei Naito “Poker-Face”
I visited Kyohei Naito’s solo exhibition “Poker-Face,” held during Art Fair Tokyo. The venue is “Bambinart Gallery,” in the basement of 3331 Arts Chiyoda.
Bambinart Gallery is pleased to present Kyohei Naito’s solo exhibition “Poker-Face.” Kyohei Naito (born 1989 in Tokyo) graduated from Tokyo University of the Arts in 2015 and completed the master’s program at the Oil Painting Techniques and Materials Laboratory of the Graduate School of Tokyo University of the Arts in 2017. Following last year’s debut solo show, this is his first new-work solo exhibition in a year.
In this exhibition, he presents new works from the painting series—combining Western painting with simple lines—that drew attention at last year’s debut show. Referencing the classics from Jan van Eyck, Dürer, and Michelangelo to anonymous masters, he paints boldly cropped fragments of the body and combines them with simple lines evoking the incised drawing of ancient murals; the resulting paintings are distinctive, striking, and lingering in the memory. The simple line drawing also calls to mind Japan’s age-old naive modes of expression, and by combining it with classical Western painting, expressions carrying several eras and backgrounds intermingle—while the deftness of the cropping and composition together give rise to a contemporary sensibility.
Above all, it’s the exquisite balance—or imbalance—the singular pairing of a “face” quoted from the classics with the simple lines that evoke an ancient incised mural. Compositionally, too, the use of the canvas is masterful!
The subtle expressions are lovely, too.
I was also able to look through the portfolio.
Centered on drawings that take livestock as their motif, it was powerful, compelling work.
The works were almost entirely sold out.
I’ll be keeping an eye on his future activity.
