Tomio Koyama Gallery is pleased to present “Painting to Communicate with Someone Unknown,” a solo exhibition of new works by Natsuko Sakamoto. This exhibition marks Sakamoto’s first solo presentation with the gallery.
Natsuko Sakamoto (b. 1983, Kumamoto; currently resides in Tokyo) is an artist who has continuously explored the possibilities of painting through her distinctive artistic process. In her first solo exhibition in Nagoya in 2008, Sakamoto presented paintings of young girls set within labyrinthine landscapes enclosed by tiles. Although her work has continually evolved since then, it has consistently been marked by a continuity that unfolds within painting itself. Consistently engaging with painting as a medium itself, Sakamoto approaches the act of painting not as a means of portraying preexisting images, but as “a way of touching a space that does not yet exist.” By actively incorporating the “mistakes” that occur during the creative process, the artist creates pictorial spaces that exceed expectations.
Regarding the new works presented in this exhibition, Sakamoto remarks, “I imagine that if each trace of paint in a finished painting could remain on the canvas without its position being fixed, it might open up multiple possibilities for communication into the future.” This way of engaging with painting also echoes Sakamoto’s communication with her father, who has gradually been losing his memory in recent years. He sends her messages made up of strings of characters that she cannot fully decode. Although at first glance, these messages may appear to be typing errors, they nonetheless contain an intention directed toward someone. Sakamoto finds in the way she responds to these messages, which she cannot fully decipher, the same attitude with which she engages with painting. Paintings that behave beyond the artist’s intentions can also seem like messages from her future self, or from someone she has yet to meet.
On the occasion of this exhibition, the artist shares the following statement:
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【Artist Statement: “Painting to Communicate with Someone Unknown”】
When I paint, obvious though it may seem, I can only move forward one brushstroke at a time. Much like life itself, you cannot skip a day and continue living.
Every mark becomes a point of divergence. When I stop to think about it, it is terrifying. If there is no way to return to the previous mark, it means losing the many possible directions the painting might have taken. And painting holds within it even those choices that may have been mistakes.
As I have done in the past, setting out rules and methods for painting in advance offers me a small sense of security. I have considered paintings “not as a means of portraying preexisting images, but as a way of touching a space that does not yet exist.” I needed something like a set of rules for painting to keep myself from being drawn back to the world I already know or making choices based solely on my own experience. Because restricting myself can sometimes set the painting free. Yet perhaps these rules, too, were really just another way of limiting the many directions the painting could take.
I try to confront what is terrifying about painting. I paint as though waiting for the necessity behind each brushstroke to gradually reveal itself. Yet that rationale, as elusive as a mirage, often slips past my grasp just when I think I have found it. My days unfold within this repetition.
Oil paint never tells me the answer. Instead, it continues to open up many possible paths. Knowing when a painting is finished has become increasingly difficult, because even when the canvas feels full, it still points toward many more directions. At such moments, I imagine someone I do not know–someone this painting may one day encounter, living in a different time from both myself and the painting.
My father now lives with an illness that gradually erodes his memory. And yet, I am certain that these messages are not simply typing errors but expressions with intention, because he has deliberately pressed the send button. I want to read them, and I believe they can be understood.
The communication I share with my father—something more than a private code, yet less than a common language—overlaps with the kind of communication I now seek with painting. I created the i’ll painting… series as if engaging in that very exchange. It is true that paintings remember everything, while human memory inevitably slips away. Yet the painting, behaving in ways I could never have anticipated as I work, sometimes feels like my father, my future self, or perhaps someone I have not yet met. Just as people type messages that cannot be fully deciphered, there is neither right nor wrong in the act of painting. With each gesture, painting reshapes harmony and discord alike, and each mark seems to open onto an unknown world, giving me the feeling that I might be able to communicate with someone I do not yet know. More than ever, I feel that there are things that can only be done through painting.
—Natsuko Sakamoto
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Through this new body of work, the exhibition presents Sakamoto’s conception of painting as “communication with someone unknown.” We invite you to experience the possibilities of painting as it moves beyond notions of right and wrong, connecting us to worlds yet unknown.
【About Natsuko Sakamoto】
Natsuko Sakamoto was born in Kumamoto Prefecture in 1983. She completed the doctoral program at the Graduate School of Fine Arts, Aichi University of the Arts, in 2012. She has participated in numerous group exhibitions, including “The Secrets of Color from Impressionism to Contemporary Art” (Pola Museum of Art, Kanagawa, 2024); “A Personal View of Japanese Contemporary Art: Takahashi Ryutaro Collection” (Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, 2024); “Does the Future Sleep Here?–Revisiting the museum’s response to contemporary art after 65 years” (The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo, 2024); “Art as MAGIC: Visionary Artists There Inner Supernatural World” (Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, 2012); and “Garden of Painting–Japanese Art of the 00s” (The National Museum of Art, Osaka, 2010). In her solo exhibition “ARKO 2013: Natsuko Sakamoto” (Ohara Museum of Art, Okayama, 2013), she presented a large-scale work created during an artist residency. Sakamoto received the Koji Kinutani Encouragement Award in 2009 and the VOCA Encouragement Award in 2010.
Her works are held in the collections of Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art; Aichi University of the Arts; Ohara Museum of Art; The National Museum of Art, Osaka; Dai-ichi Life Insurance Company, Limited; Toyota Municipal Museum of Art; Contemporary Art Museum Kumamoto; Takahashi Ryutaro Collection; UESHIMA COLLECTION; and other public and private collections.
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