Momoko Nakagawa
A member of the Yamanami workshop (Shiga, Japan) since 2015, Momoko Nakagawa has been doing, in a broad and regular gesture, a serial and calibrated work on writing, moving from the undulating of colored frequencies to stamping numbers in coffee halos. Evoking lyrical abstraction, the young artist’s work “combines gestural spontaneity, calligraphic elegance, serialized repetition, and formal inventiveness,” as Raphael Koenig writes in the dossier devoted to her by Artpress (2020). Her work was exhibited for the first time in 2019 at Harvard University, and then, that same year, at the gallery as part of the choral exhibition japon brut: la lune, le soleil, yamanami. In 2019, Momoko Nakagawa receives the Art Absolument Award for Outsider Art.
Born on 1996, Momoko Nakagawa lives in Shiga Prefecture in Japan and has been participating in Atelier Yamanami since 2015.
Momoko repeatedly spells her own name, “Momoko,” with a long stroke fully extending her arm. Lines overlapping in multitude intertwine and develop into an image like abstract art, going beyond the original shape of each character. While in her everyday life, stereotyped and repeated behaviors are often observed, which are prone to be seen negatively as problematic behaviors, they turn out to be positive in her creation.
Momoko is not concerned about the instruments, using such general writing materials as markers and pens. Through the activity of simply keeping to draw in overlay, she seems to enjoy every bit of changing shapes of characters in front of her, sense and sound of pens touching the paper, and kinesthetic sensation spreading from the tip of her fingers to her arm and to her entire body.
Preface : Yukiko Koide & Raphaël Koenig
Foreword : Christian Berst.
Catalog published to mark the exhibition Japan Brut : the moon, the sun, yamanami, from August 31st to October 5th, 2019.
