Manika Nagare “Spectrum of Vivid Moments”

Miyako Yoshinaga

[Image: Manika Nagare "My Eyes Sparkled"（きらん) (2022) Oil on canvas 28 5/8 x 28 5/8 in. Series: In Between Signed and titled on verso]

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MIYAKO YOSHINAGA presents Spectrum of Vivid Moments, a solo exhibition by Manika Nagare, a Tokyo-based artist. The exhibition, the fourth one by the artist after 2014, 2016, and 2020 at the gallery.

Nagare applies multiple layers of unmixed colors onto the canvas, conveying shifting differences in light and perspective. Her powerfully sophisticated oil on canvas strives to elicit vivid moments of all human life. This exhibition will also introduce Nagare’s new project Track of Colors, inspired by the works of Japanese female artists of the 19th and the 20th centuries who were active but marginalized in society.

Nagare works only in natural light, allowing her to delineate subtle colors that are otherwise difficult to discern. She believes this strong union of (natural) light and color extends to the life, which unfolds in an infinite spectrum of light. In her series, In Between, Nagare explores the life-to-death spectrum, the spiritual transition/boundary between life and death that is metaphorically compared to water/river in Japanese culture. Her work explores the ambiguity of the two separations and seeks to bridge them in that remembering the vivid moments of the deceased enables us to feel that person’s return to the side of life. Exhibition includes three newest paintings from this eries, Between the Lines, Recalling, and Light Shifts Every Second.

As light reveals subtle colors, Nagare’s efforts as a painter of light/color illuminate historically little-known Japanese female artists of the last century. In Japan, the work of these artists was often acquired by institutions only because they were the spouse of a famous male artist. Since 2020, Nagare has found nine works in multiple Japanese museums, traced the colors used by the artist in each piece, and layered them one by one onto a new canvas. In this exhibition, all nine works from Track of Color are the same height, arranged linearly and forming a kind of color code, presenting the viewer with the vanishing footprints of female artists neglected in official art history.

Manika Nagare (born in 1975) studied painting at the Joshibi University of Art and Design. She has been exhibiting her work in Japan, the United States, Turkey, and France among other international venues. Her work is represented by numerous international public and private collections such as The Takamatsu Art Museum, Kagawa, Japan, Nerima Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan, and the Kocaeri University Museum, Turkey.