Nika Assocation "From Another Perspective"
By Itoko Nakajima
Traditional Japanese art organization, Nika Association, had an opening and show on June 29th at ISE Cultural Foundation and Plaza Hotel in New York. There were a lot of Japanese contemporary artists gathered to celebrate the 150th anniversary of US-Japan relations at the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. A curator at ISE Cultural Foundation, Mie Iwatsuki elaborated the theme as "Nika Association from Another Perspective", which examines the issue of identity, internationalization, and the traditional Japanese art organization from another perspective. On that day, I also met Yoshio Tsuruoka, president of Nika Association at the Plaza hotel. He said they specifically support contemporary arts and global perspective artists and they have both established artists and upcoming artists. This is a very interesting point, because one can see both famous artists and upcoming artists at the same time.
A counselor of Nika Association, Jun-ichi Ubukata, who painted "Angle of 7", mentioned that a "Big heavy stone is floating in the space because I wanted to express some invisible power like a religion." A French artist who visited at the time said, "It is gorgeous!" Ocean blue and midnight sky blue affect each other in the sculpture in a beautiful way with a floating big stone.
Masatoyo Iwaizako, who painted "Scenery of a Persona" is an art high school teacher from Japan. He was originally supposed to come to New York with his students but after the terrorism events at the World Trade Center was unable to do so. He wanted to express what he felt concerning the attacks by creating his vision of the collapsing building. He believes that terrorism is human, and terrorism would never have happened if the world was fair for everyone; terrorism occurred because something was unfair. Thus his oil painting was named, "Scenery of a Person".
Kisaburo Nakano, who painted "Memory", said the idea for the painting came from his mother’s death 5 years ago. He felt his mother’s spirit from her bed after she died, so he expressed the feeling that her spirit remained even though her life was over by painting a dark shadow over the bed. I felt the delicate spirit from his work and noticed that he loved his mother very much. In the canvas there is also a withered lotus, a chair and a drip infusion. In Buddhism, a bonze (Buddhist monk, especially of China, Japan, or nearby countries) scatters paper made of lotus flowers for a funeral, and this is called "Sange". Nakano used the image of the withered lotus flower to show the beauty of the spirit that remains forever after death. It was a successful representation, as I felt the feeling of eternity emanated strongly from the withered flower.
