Year: 2022
Medium: oil on canvas
Dimensions: 131.2 x 89.5 cm (51 5/8 x 35 1/4 in.)
Acquired from Taka Ishii Gallery, 2023
Nobuya Hoki is a painter of lines. He is known for the unique “nihon-ga” technique (“double-line painting,” a pun based on the term for “Japanese-style painting”) that he has continued to develop to this day, painting in paired lines of dark blue and brown. The presence of the lines themselves is somewhat more subtle in this work. Their use in this work seems to place more weight on the act of painting rather than the sharp movement of drawing the lines, as seen in the artist’s more typical “nihon-ga” pieces or drawings. In Hoki’s previous works, the iconography emerged through the simple contrast at play between ground, whether canvas or paper, and the lines drawn upon it. Viewing this painting in that light, it looks like the distinction between ground and figure (line) has been deliberately restrained. The use of two chromatic poles remains consistent with Hoki’s earlier work, with dark blue and brown as the basic colors, while complementary pairs such as blue and orange, or purple and yellow, are layered as if chasing each other. The overlapping and adjacent colors at times dull or reinforce one another, influenced by the brushwork and translucency of the paint. This creates a beautiful interplay of colors across the canvas, reminiscent of thin fabric fluttering in the wind. The sharply defined ridge-like creases that occasionally emerge amid the fluttering would correspond to the linework here. The painting is also isolated from the outside world (the reality in which we exist), as an independent system in which a complex interrelation of colors and lines unfold. The lines placed here possess duality: the movements performed within the constraints of the right-handed painter Nobuya Hoki’s body (arm), and the actions informed by his intent, which is inseparable from his body. This is because, when Hoki paints, the painting constitutes the entire spatial mass with which his body is engaged.
