Iori Nagashima: First Solo Show in HK

Description

WKM Gallery presents Between, Iori Nagashima’s first solo exhibition in Hong Kong. Known for soft, subdued oil paintings of daily routines and everyday objects, the Japanese painter’s new series emerges from his residency at the local gallery Side Space. The works revolve around motifs and subjects he encountered in the city and its communities, reflecting his immersion in Hong Kong’s complex, layered fabric.

Still life and figure paintings, such as “Still Life with Chair, Clock, Shirt and Shoes” and “Hong Kong Trash Can” are shaped as much by absence as by presence: shadows and grey tones mark the slant of sunlight, the scent of a quiet noon drifting through an open window, the lingering warmth of a body recently gone. Motifs like a dragonfruit and ladders on sidewalks on standby signal a world that is not timeless but anchored to a specific moment in Hong Kong.

Thick, tactile paint layers echo the city’s oil-based wall coatings and accumulated histories, transposing the texture of weathered facades onto the canvas. Replacing Nagashima’s usual thin, elegant coats with a heavier surface that matches Hong Kong’s energy, the works invite reflection on atmosphere, memory, perception and the invisible strata that shape daily life. Between frames this space as a site of observation and connection, asking how we perceive one another within the complexity of urban life and what values of continuity, care and truth we hold in that threshold.