Gallery

Nostalgia III Oil on canvas, 130.6 × 194.1 cm

Nobuko Naono and Nostalgia.
Artist and artwork — a pairing that feels profoundly natural.
When we experience nostalgia, we find ourselves gently detached from our usual time and space. The “here and now” becomes relativized.
Yet in Naono’s paintings, paradoxically, it is the very “here and now” of the artwork — the moment it offers — that radiates a presence stronger than everyday reality.
Her ongoing pursuit of a subtle harmony with light and air gives rise to a sense of freedom, dissolving the boundaries between abstraction and representation.
The flow of water, drifting clouds, the shadowed forest — those primal memories of first encounters are quietly awakened.
And from them, nostalgia is born.
Tender, yet exacting.
A shared origin of visual experience, accessible to all.
— Tsutomu Mizusawa