Shintaro Nakahara’s work derives from ancient Japanese calligraphic traditions. He reinterprets age-old practices in a pop-influenced way, aligning the ancient forms with contemporary culture - working with iridescent colour and highly-refined painted surfaces.
Despite the pop-art relationships and the energy apparent in the forms of the works, it is clear from even a cursory viewing that these are painstakingly rendered paintings.
Minute shifts in colour - similar to adjustments that can be made in an instant in Photoshop - occur throughout the works. The flatness and precision of the planes of colour, speaks of the care he observes in the painting process. The apparent 'freedom' of line is belied by the rigid repetition of the same form over and over within the works.
The viewer is forced to consider multiple layering, depth and surface simultaneously as the artist’s repetitive forms oscillate between high key vivid colours and neutrals. The shifts in colour and form impart an obsessive complexity to the glossy surfaces which otherwise have a cartoon-like flatness.
In this, Nakahara's works can be seen to relate to 'Superflat' as described by Takashi Murakami which refers to the two-dimensionality of Japanese graphic art and animation and an accompanying critique of the shallow nature of Japanese popular culture.
However, Nakahara's primary concern is to depict a compelling composition rich in form and diverse in colour.
Nakahara received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Tama Art University in Tokyo Japan in 1995 and moved to Auckland in 2006. 'Luminous' is the first solo exhibition at Sanderson Contemporary Art from Shintaro Nakahara, a Japanese-born Auckland-based artist.
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