Naoto Nakagawa

Naoto Nakagawa, God Is Here. Courtesy of KAPOW.

By JONATHAN GOODMAN March 19, 2025

Naoto Nakagawa is an accomplished, mature painter who came to America at the young age of eighteen and has stayed in New York City ever since, except for five years in Vermont in the 1970s. In this exhibition of his recent work at Kapow Gallery, located on Monroe Street on the Lower East Side, his specializations--both accessible and stylistically clear--become a lucid appreciation of the United States and provide a sense of human unity across the world, using sharp skill with his brush. Having spent most of the past sixty years in New York’s art milieu, Nakagawa has become a man who remains devoted to painting despite his age, working steadfastly, seven days a week, in his studio in Tribeca.

As an Asian-born artist living in New York and usually painting emblematically through the presentation of universal themes, Nakagawa searches for a ground to speak from. Two of the strongest, and largest, works in the show display prominent images of globes central to the physical space of the painting. Doing so automatically gives his work a sense of larger purpose, a way of speaking to all rather than to a specific population determined by race, class, or geographical origin. This gives his work, such as Earth Descending a Staircase, No. 9 (2024) a large reach, resounding quite literally around the world.

Naoto Nakagawa, Earth Descending A Staircase No. 9. Acrylic on Linen. Courtesy of KAPOW.

The work titled God is Here (2025), the second sphere painting, continues Nakagawa's strong spiritual interests. This work shares several features experienced in the first work of art described above. In the middle of the painting a blue-and-green globe is central; on either side of it we come across a man and a woman; they may be angels; the woman, with her back to us, is naked and has long black hair, while on the right the man, also without clothing, extends an arm upward into the sky, over an expanse of the sea out of which a powerful fish rises. Two fields of multicolored spheres and multicolored diamonds, take up the upper register. Beneath the sphere is a full spectrum of colors, ranging from black to deep blue to bright orange. Heavy red curtains give us the sense that this is a stage whose actions are to be understood allegorically, or an ornate frame to provide a sense of theater. Whatever motives Nakagawa may be displaying here, they are meant to move from private to public meaning, being of a metaphorical nature.

The next painting, GATE: Eight Billion People of the World (For Ukraine) (2022), dedicated to the Russian-invaded Ukraine, presents the viewing audience with many, many people, of different races, ethnicities, and cultural backgrounds, including AI robots, who return the gaze of those looking at them. Given the variety of their clothing and countenances, it is clear that the artist is determined to address as many people as he can (the figures grow fainter, fading into black as they recede deeper into perspective). A blue and yellow frame, the colors of the Ukraine flag, are filled with the national flowers of the world. Nakagawa even lightens things up by including himself, vigorously alive and smiling, in the front right quadrant. 

Naoto Nakagawa, America II, 2024. Acrylic on linen. Courtesy of KAPOW.

The last painting we will talk of is America II (2024). Many colored spheres dot the night sky at the top of the painting. Beneath it is a field of stars, which suggest rows and patterns but do not fully complete them. And in the bottom reflection, painted in a hellish-like murk, are forms we cannot fully make out.

Nakagawa is an artist eager to make connections between this world and the next. He stretches his metaphors to the point where they become visible art. Over time, there is a great gladness that surfaces in his style, in which realism contains a deep connection with spectral emanations, meant to make us feel and think. Nakagawa does call out for a spiritual life, albeit one that has a strong grip on the real. His symbolism, accessible to all of us, inculcates a useful language of sympathetic reasoning meant to inspire us now and ahead. WM