MAKI NA KAMURA

ISOTON (engl. isotone), a term more commonly used in mathematics, biology or physics, is also the title for the artist’s new series of works and describes, in short, a constant tension (in Greek ἴσος ísos means ‘same’ and τόνος tónos ‘stretch’). Just like the nuclear atomic ‘isotone’ that has the same number of neutrons as another, but a differing number of protons, Na Kamura’s paintings possess art historical motifs and structures that become isolated and interwoven anew.

The artist specifically traces individual reoccurring structures or motifs from classical masterpieces. She locates similarities and cultural transfers. In Na Kamura’s paintings, we are clandestinely confronted with the works of Nicolas Poussin, Jean-Francois Millet or Puvis de Chavannes. Her paintings breathe century-old pictorial traditions. Yet the artist is not so much interested in the iconographic contents of an image, rather she undertakes a structural analysis that feeds into her discourse on the concept of painting.

The portrayal of landscapes takes on a central role as it perpetually renegotiates the complex relation of images to the actual environment and how it is perceived. Maki Na Kamura’s paintings reconsider questions of seeing, contemplation and depiction, and of the visual materialisation of outer and inner images. In her colour- landscapes, perception and reflection have a kind of dialogue: what does this instant look like, this ephemeral moment in which seeing merges with thinking, in which the musing gaze wanders without focussing on anything particular as though one were able to look through things?

Born in Osaka, the artist studied art in Aichi and at the Art Academy in Düsseldorf under Jörg Immendorff. She lives and works in Berlin.