Maki Na Kamura

Maki Na Kamura
Born in Osaka and now residing in Berlin.

She held solo exhibitions in Künstlerhaus Bethanien (Berlin) and Oldenburger Kunstverein (Oldenburg) in 2014, and Bilbao Arte – centro de arte contemporáneo (Bilbao) in 2015. This was followed in 2017 by a large solo exhibition at the Osthaus Museum Hagen (Hagen) and other solo exhibitions at CONTEMPORARY FINE ARTS (CFA, Berlin) and the Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens (Belgium). As this evidences, she has remained in extensive activity, mainly in Europe.
Na Kamura is a rare type of painter who established a new style of expression by a both innovative and original technique making extensive use of European paintings from the Renaissance to the current age. She scans images of paintings and prints from the 16th to the 18th century she finds in art books, outputs the scanning data with a simple laser printer, and incorporates the color lines and striped patterns appearing in this output. By so doing, she strives to have the painting contain the thickness of time stretching over several centuries right up to the present. In addition, she focuses on the rules of perspective (hidden line drawing) and apprehends “horizon” as a fictional vision artificially produced by the painter, and paints it as a key element for her creation of new images of the world. Furthermore, by leaving blank space on the perimeters of the canvas, she puts the very frame into the painting, and thereby unequivocally proclaims that the work is a finished painting and takes painting itself as a motif. She developed a distinctive palette of colors by mixing oil and water paints. The beautiful coloring born from it, the dynamic depictions with a layering of delicate hues minus outlines, and the impressive brush strokes recalling physical motion all continue to captivate many viewers.
Na Kamura went to Germany after studying painting at Aichi University of the Arts. In Germany, she studied under Jörg Immendorff, who had been a student of Joseph Beuys, at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. She was awarded the Falkenrot Prize in 2013.

 

Selected Collections

Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, France

 

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