Kazuki Nakahara | Strichhaltige Gründe | Galerie Inga Kondeyne | 07.09.-16.10.2024

Anyone who has ever encountered exhibits by the illustrator Kazuki Nakahara at Inga Kondeyne’s once or even several times will probably be able to activate vivid reminiscences of mostly large-format sheets covered with almost infinitely variable line formations and line breaks: atmospheric areas that emit the breath of an airy lightness.

The fleetingness of appearances is always preserved in the new sheets; however, a different mood prevails in them. As before, the view is unobstructed of Nakahara’s line-by-line accumulation of the most diverse drawing abbreviations with the character of empty signifiers, whereby each line at the same time provides deliberate recesses, which in turn function as blank lineatures of the sheet ground in the overall view. All of this is organized into an abstract configuration that now has a more expressive/dramatic connotation. Strokes, lines and line breaks interlock to form tense counter-rotations or superimpositions, orchestrate interspersed agglomerations, swirls and distortions or end abruptly at vertical/diagonal ‘through-radiations’ of the sheet ground. Pronounced, sometimes rapid ‘impulses of movement’ come into play, flowing through the artist’s most recent series of drawings. As a final accent, a seemingly lightning-like trace of disturbance is often laid over the sheet in charcoal pencil or protrudes into it from the edge.

Every stroke, every abbreviation, every drawing as an expression of itself is important here; Nakahara’s detailed tableaux, ultimately unattainable and tangible in terms of words, address the eye and the mind, stimulating sensations, memories, even questions; the manageable use of material unleashes a pull into ‘dematerialized’ terrain, as it were: what forces are clashing here, what ‘air spirits’ are wrestling with each other here? The information provided by each sheet of paper: it’s CLIMBING.

Further descriptions of possible evocations are omitted at this point, if only to avoid constricting anything in advance. Everyone can indulge in their own perceptions and imaginations on site, ponder them and seek an exchange; because the enrichment of the aesthetic experience ultimately takes place as an epistemological pendulum path between the artistic phenomena (in particular as a reference between works) and the thought networks of the aesthetic world of ideas – back and forth again… Everything begins with getting involved, perceiving and marveling… no different in front of the exhibits here:

‘What happens to me?
– Josef Molitor

Kazuki Nakahara, born 1980 in Kagawa/Japan; 2000-2005 studied at Yokohama City University; 2005-2010 studied at the Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weißensee; 2010/11 master student of Hanns Schimansky; 2010 first prize, “Ereignis Druckgraphik 2”, BBK Leipzig e. V. 2011 “Mart Stam Förderpreis”, Mart Stam Gesellschaft, Berlin; 2013/14 residency in London, Pola Art Fondation, Tokyo; 2017 “Christine-Perthen-Preis für Radierung”, Berlinische Galerie, Berlin; 2020 “XII Egmont-Schaefer-Preis für Zeichnung 2020”, Berliner Kabinett e.V.; 2023 university lecturer at the Hochschule für Gestaltung Pforzheim; 2024 research grant for fine arts from the Berlin Senate; lives and works in Berlin

Opening: Friday, 6. September 2024, 6 – 8 pm

Exhibition period: Saturday, 7. September until Wednesday, 16. October 2024