Wraparound

From October 27 to December 10, 2016, MIYAKO YOSHINAGA is pleased to present Wraparound, the gallery’s second solo exhibition by Manika Nagare. An opening reception for the artist will be held on Thursday, October 27, 2016 from 6pm to 8pm. The artist will be present.

More than five years after the Eastern Japan Great Earthquake struck Fukushima and its surroundings in 2011, Tokyo-based Manika Nagare still continues to explore its aftermath and traumatic effects. Inspired by the nature’s myriad facets, her 10 new oil paintings (four of them forming the set of two large diptychs that are the show’s centerpiece) feature delicately rendered organic lines and carefully glazed and layered colors. They are both inviting and unsettling, as if they are the potentially fearful remnants of destructive force. The artist states: “We humans tend to forget that we are part of nature and hold responsibility for its future. I want the viewer to feel part of the painting, because what’s happening in the painting is not separate from the viewer.”

Although Nagare’s paintings stem from perceivable phenomena in the real world (i.e. heat haze, cicada chirps), they don’t merely display the physical world nor signal a higher truth. They are nature itself. Her dramatic use of unmixed colors such as orange, pink, green or blue brightens each space like fire. Her biomorphic lines flow with smooth rhythm like water. Her brushstrokes on canvas look as lightweight as a feather touching skin. In Nagare’s paintings, all these evocative elements coexist in nature, only to be discovered by the viewer.