“Minoru Nomata: 映遠 – Far Sights” Installation view at White Cube Seoul ©White Cube SeoulWhite Cube Seoul presents “映遠 – Far Sights”, Minoru Nomata (b.1955)’s first solo exhibition in Korea, through March 2. In this exhibition, Minoru Nomata presents paintings and drawings that explore the notion of boundless expanse – whether that be in the mind or our very universe through the aesthetics of the sublime.
Conveyed through the first part of the title ‘映遠’, to mean ‘reflecting distance’ in Japanese, Nomata envisions landscapes where vertiginous architectural forms stand in serene grandeur, emerging from low horizon lines that blur the frontier between Earth and the cosmos. From the artworks of ‘Precisionist’ painter Charles Sheeler and the Bauhaus luminary Lyonel Feininger to the visual kinetics of Op Art and the fluid style of Symbolism and Art Deco, Nomata’s paintings are influenced by a variety of styles. Reflecting the iterative cycle of de-construction and re-building inherent to Japanese architectural processes, Nomata has stated that ‘the present, the past and the future exist at the same time’ in his paintings.
This exhibition consists of a wide range of works that negotiate realities both concrete and oneiric, embracing uncertainties of time, place and perspective spanning the past two decades of the artist’s practice, including his early 1990s ‘Eastbound’ series influenced by ‘Japonisme’ and Eastern aesthetics. In particular, the ‘Far Sights’ series, which comprises both painting and finely detailed, soft brown Conté crayon drawings inspired by Old Master techniques, sees imagery merge with the conditions of its production. Created in a small studio, Nomata drew parallels to the intimate spatial confines of the ‘Chashitsu’– an architectural space designed to house Japanese tea ceremonies. In this environment, Nomata found resonances between the infinite possibilities of the imagination and the notion of a vast cosmic expanse.
And, the ‘Seeds’ series are rendered using color pencil, pastel and charcoal on gessoed plywood panels in a technique inspired by Medieval Icons and Renaissance painting. The ‘Rectangular Drawings’ series and the ‘Ghost’ series from the mid-2010s capture the illusion of buildings that have already been demolished and exist only in memory. Standing upside down on intangible foundations, the structures evoke imagery reminiscent of floating fortresses or remnants of a dream.
Devoid of identifiable markers, Nomata’s silent landscapes reveal diverse conditions: from nuclear ruination to cosmic infinitude, from the relentless glare of industrial light to the enduring waxing and waning of solar energy. Within these works, the mortal ambitions of human endeavour contend with the supreme boundlessness of an unknowable universe.
Minoru Nomata lives and works in Tokyo. He studied design at the Tokyo University of the Arts, graduating in 1979 before taking up a position in an advertising agency in the city. After five years Nomata left in order to focus on his painting practice, and in 1986 held his debut exhibition ‘STILL – Quiet Garden’ at the Sagacho Exhibit Space. Further solo exhibitions include Meguro Museum of Art, Tokyo (1993); Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery (2004); The Museum of Modern Art, Gunma, Japan (2010); De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea, UK (2022); and Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery (2023). Until recently, Nomata was a Professor at the Joshibi University of Art and Design in Tokyo.
