NAOTO KAWAHARA

Naoto Kawahara was educated in industrial design. During Kawahara’s four years in Italy, where he studied at the Lorenzo de Medici Institute in Florence, he abandoned graphic design to embrace Western painting.

Naoto Kawahara’s painted women seduce us with their beautiful, soft-skinned young bodies and absent-minded faces. His highly sophisticated formal language goes beyond its many hidden references to art history to reveal a rich fantasy full of strong but subtle erotic undertones. His Japanese models refer the classical works of Degas, Balthus, Dürer, Magritte, Van Gogh, Munch and other masters of historical Western art. ‘I reinterpret ‘painting as painting’ by mentally re-imagining and re-picturing the masterworks,’ says Kawahara. ‘I search for the model, photograph it in the appropriate setting, and embark on the process of painting. By translating existing paintings, I try to create another image of them.’

The combination of Japanese and Western imagery can be misleading for the viewer who views the images within the context of his own culture. From this standpoint, the works created by Kawahara play with our cultural imprints, our misunderstandings and false interpretations, and with our culture-specific concepts of beauty.

Courtesy Zeno X Gallery