Sadamasa Motonaga + Etsuko Nakatsuji "Afterimage of Memory"
Blum
Until Apr 4
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Sadamasa Motonaga, Etsuko Nakatsuji
BLUM is pleased to announce the representation of the estate of Sadamasa Motonaga and the artist Etsuko Nakatsuji coinciding with their two-person exhibition, Afterimage of Memory, at BLUM Tokyo opening Friday, February 14. Solo exhibitions for the artists will follow in Los Angeles and New York.
Partnered from 1960 until Motonaga’s passing in 2011, husband and wife pair Motonaga and Nakatsuji have jointly and individually made strides in the advancement of the postwar Japanese avant-garde practices for the better part of a century. A long-revered original member of the 1950s Gutai group, Motonaga is best known for his unique ability to express life’s pathos through the playful tenor of his vibrantly colored paintings, his experimentation with found materials, and his work on illustrated children’s books. Though Nakatsuji studied art, for much of her adult life she supported her family as a graphic designer in the advertising department at Hanshin Department Store to allow space in their home for her husband’s practice. She did, however, consistently maintain an artistic practice of painting and making fabric objets called poco-pins. While both artists’ painting practices are primarily abstract, each engages human perception and the body in a profound manner. Motonaga’s later work, in its graphic orientation, possesses strong resonances with searching for an “ambivalent illusion of vision,” a theme that Nakatsuji also grappled with for decades.
In 1957, Nakatsuji attended classes at Nishinomiya Art School, studying under Suda Kokuta and Waichi Tsutaka. It was through school that Nakatsuji met Motonaga who was already a member of Gutai, and Nakatsuji became inspired by the ideas of the group’s leader, Jiro Yoshihara. “Do something no one has ever done before,” Yoshihara famously said about artmaking. In 1960, Motonaga and Nakatsuji moved in together. Their first son was born two years later.
Having created his well-known installation Work (Water) (1956), which was featured in the Outdoor Gutai Art Exhibition at Ashiya Park in 1956, Motonaga’s career was already taking off when he met Nakatsuji in 1957. In 1962, with the opening of the Gutai Pinacotheca, a gallery exhibiting work by Gutai artists, the Gutai movement gained an international presence with global artists and critics such as John Cage, Clement Greenberg, Isamu Noguchi, Yoko Ono, and many more. At a time when abstraction was thought to have taken painting to its logical conclusion, Gutai’s pioneering installations and performative experimentations onto the canvas were unprecedented, unafraid of violating sacred boundaries. Motonaga’s own multidisciplinary oeuvre benefited from this with features in Assemblages Environments and Happenings by Allan Kaprow in 1966 and museum exhibitions such as The New Japanese Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, New York also in 1966.
While working as a designer full-time, Nakatsuji began sewing objects from leftover bedspread fabric. The result were objets in human-like shapes, and by hanging them from the ceiling of their apartment, she created the first poco-pin. Nakatsuji’s work was discovered by Takashi Yamamoto of Tokyo Gallery while he was visiting Motonaga. Nakatsuji had her first-ever exhibition at Tokyo Gallery in 1963, comprised of an installation of poco-pins. It was well received, grounding and defining the artist’s creative position for years to come. The figures from this exhibition evoke the immersive Surrealist installations of the 1920s that defy childish charm and, instead, possess an organic mysticism that lies between the threshold of life and afterlife. Nakatsuji notes, “I’m always thinking about objects that reflect someone who is filled with a strange and interesting quality. . . One’s form, color, line, and shape are tied to the changes in one’s brightness, humor, and peaceful image.”
In Nakatsuji’s later series, when she returned to painting, the artist echoes and expands upon the investigations behind her early poco-pins. Her 1983 group exhibition at Sogetsu, Toward Space, comprised an installation of suspended cloth with eyes paired with actual geta sandals, exuding psychological symbolism and corporeality. The work Running Works 3 x 6 #1 (1990) deals with exactly this—simple marks to indicate eyes, a single camouflaged rope along the painted red surface, and the geta sandals on the floor below the plywood, unified as effective signals of personification, together projecting the mind and body. Likewise, Nakatsuji’s [Aizu]—eyes— and hitogata (human form) series convey part objects and geometric silhouettes with bold, exuberantly winding lines that form a human image, and unmistakable cartoonish legs that appear to walk without a torso atop them. Nakatsuji’s signature eyes accompany these, at times possessing a halo-like glow.
Motonaga’s Red Circle and Circle (1992) depicts two bulbous circles perched atop a wash of the artist’s distinctive, abstract billows of vivid paint—bridging the artist’s early work in poured abstractions that he made as a member of Gutai with the graphic style of his later career. Comparing Motonaga’s early work with his later periods, the viewer will note a transition from abstraction alongside installation work, into using more fluorescent colors and gradients after his residency in New York from 1966-1967, to his late works which often feature large, hard-edge, color-gradated shapes and forms. Yellow Veil and Group of Shapes (1993), for instance, includes many personified shapes with distinctive portions for a body with limbs beneath it to hint at that which is alive.
While Gutai was a major presence through Motonaga’s involvement, it was Nakatsuji’s graphic design practice including her own illustrated books and collaborations with Motonaga as a producer of illustrated children’s books, that ultimately integrated their styles. With Motonaga’s evolution into the representational and Nakatsuji’s return to painting, the two produced undeniably resonant work around the turn of the century. As Nakatsuji said, “As I had been imprinted with the spirit of Gutai, it was impossible for me not to be aware of Sadamasa Motonaga. Although each of us worked in different formats, our sense of values did not differ significantly.”
Partnered from 1960 until Motonaga’s passing in 2011, husband and wife pair Motonaga and Nakatsuji have jointly and individually made strides in the advancement of the postwar Japanese avant-garde practices for the better part of a century. A long-revered original member of the 1950s Gutai group, Motonaga is best known for his unique ability to express life’s pathos through the playful tenor of his vibrantly colored paintings, his experimentation with found materials, and his work on illustrated children’s books. Though Nakatsuji studied art, for much of her adult life she supported her family as a graphic designer in the advertising department at Hanshin Department Store to allow space in their home for her husband’s practice. She did, however, consistently maintain an artistic practice of painting and making fabric objets called poco-pins. While both artists’ painting practices are primarily abstract, each engages human perception and the body in a profound manner. Motonaga’s later work, in its graphic orientation, possesses strong resonances with searching for an “ambivalent illusion of vision,” a theme that Nakatsuji also grappled with for decades.
In 1957, Nakatsuji attended classes at Nishinomiya Art School, studying under Suda Kokuta and Waichi Tsutaka. It was through school that Nakatsuji met Motonaga who was already a member of Gutai, and Nakatsuji became inspired by the ideas of the group’s leader, Jiro Yoshihara. “Do something no one has ever done before,” Yoshihara famously said about artmaking. In 1960, Motonaga and Nakatsuji moved in together. Their first son was born two years later.
Having created his well-known installation Work (Water) (1956), which was featured in the Outdoor Gutai Art Exhibition at Ashiya Park in 1956, Motonaga’s career was already taking off when he met Nakatsuji in 1957. In 1962, with the opening of the Gutai Pinacotheca, a gallery exhibiting work by Gutai artists, the Gutai movement gained an international presence with global artists and critics such as John Cage, Clement Greenberg, Isamu Noguchi, Yoko Ono, and many more. At a time when abstraction was thought to have taken painting to its logical conclusion, Gutai’s pioneering installations and performative experimentations onto the canvas were unprecedented, unafraid of violating sacred boundaries. Motonaga’s own multidisciplinary oeuvre benefited from this with features in Assemblages Environments and Happenings by Allan Kaprow in 1966 and museum exhibitions such as The New Japanese Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, New York also in 1966.
While working as a designer full-time, Nakatsuji began sewing objects from leftover bedspread fabric. The result were objets in human-like shapes, and by hanging them from the ceiling of their apartment, she created the first poco-pin. Nakatsuji’s work was discovered by Takashi Yamamoto of Tokyo Gallery while he was visiting Motonaga. Nakatsuji had her first-ever exhibition at Tokyo Gallery in 1963, comprised of an installation of poco-pins. It was well received, grounding and defining the artist’s creative position for years to come. The figures from this exhibition evoke the immersive Surrealist installations of the 1920s that defy childish charm and, instead, possess an organic mysticism that lies between the threshold of life and afterlife. Nakatsuji notes, “I’m always thinking about objects that reflect someone who is filled with a strange and interesting quality. . . One’s form, color, line, and shape are tied to the changes in one’s brightness, humor, and peaceful image.”
In Nakatsuji’s later series, when she returned to painting, the artist echoes and expands upon the investigations behind her early poco-pins. Her 1983 group exhibition at Sogetsu, Toward Space, comprised an installation of suspended cloth with eyes paired with actual geta sandals, exuding psychological symbolism and corporeality. The work Running Works 3 x 6 #1 (1990) deals with exactly this—simple marks to indicate eyes, a single camouflaged rope along the painted red surface, and the geta sandals on the floor below the plywood, unified as effective signals of personification, together projecting the mind and body. Likewise, Nakatsuji’s [Aizu]—eyes— and hitogata (human form) series convey part objects and geometric silhouettes with bold, exuberantly winding lines that form a human image, and unmistakable cartoonish legs that appear to walk without a torso atop them. Nakatsuji’s signature eyes accompany these, at times possessing a halo-like glow.
Motonaga’s Red Circle and Circle (1992) depicts two bulbous circles perched atop a wash of the artist’s distinctive, abstract billows of vivid paint—bridging the artist’s early work in poured abstractions that he made as a member of Gutai with the graphic style of his later career. Comparing Motonaga’s early work with his later periods, the viewer will note a transition from abstraction alongside installation work, into using more fluorescent colors and gradients after his residency in New York from 1966-1967, to his late works which often feature large, hard-edge, color-gradated shapes and forms. Yellow Veil and Group of Shapes (1993), for instance, includes many personified shapes with distinctive portions for a body with limbs beneath it to hint at that which is alive.
While Gutai was a major presence through Motonaga’s involvement, it was Nakatsuji’s graphic design practice including her own illustrated books and collaborations with Motonaga as a producer of illustrated children’s books, that ultimately integrated their styles. With Motonaga’s evolution into the representational and Nakatsuji’s return to painting, the two produced undeniably resonant work around the turn of the century. As Nakatsuji said, “As I had been imprinted with the spirit of Gutai, it was impossible for me not to be aware of Sadamasa Motonaga. Although each of us worked in different formats, our sense of values did not differ significantly.”
Schedule Now in session | Feb 14 (Fri) 2025-Apr 4 (Fri) 2025 11 days left Opening Hours Information
Opening Reception Feb 14 (Fri) 2025 17:00 - 19:00 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fee | Free | ||||
| Website | https://blum-gallery.com/exhibition?lang=eng&filename=1738631497933x200927331754442750 | ||||
| Venue | Blum https://blum-gallery.com/ | ||||
| Location | 5F Harajuku Jingu-no-mori, 1-14-34 Jingumae, Shibuya-ku , Tokyo 150-0001 | ||||
| Access | 1 minute walk from the Takeshita exit of Harajuku Station on the JR Yamanote line, 2 minute walk from exit 2 at Meiji-jingumae Station on the Chiyoda and Fukutoshin lines. | ||||
| Phone | 03-3475-1631 | ||||
| Related images | Click on the image to enlarge it   |
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