Next Big Thing: Shota Nakamura
The Japanese artist creates contemplative figurative paintings that fuse a naive, folkloric aesthetic with palpable psychological weight
Berlin-based, Japanese artist Shota Nakamura creates contemplative figurative paintings that fuse a naive, folkloric aesthetic with palpable psychological weight. His subjects—often anonymous figures at rest—are placed in dreamlike landscapes where color and light are the true protagonists. A profound affinity for the natural world, cultivated during his upbringing near Mount Fuji, underpins the work. “What I am most deeply interested in is the tonality of light,” says the artist, whose recent concurrent shows, “Blue and Green” and “Orient,” were his first with Taka Ishii Gallery in Tokyo.
Unique process: “I often leave a painting aside and return to it later. I can add a new stroke beside one I made two years ago or discover a new direction by revisiting a canvas that has been sitting unfinished for a long while. That dialogue across time is something I love about painting. It allows me to keep testing colors, making marks, and probing different subjects.”
“Shota’s latest compositions evoke early modernist sensibilities while articulating a deeply contemporary meditation on perception and the passage of time,” says Vincenzo de Bellis, Chief Artistic Officer and Global Director of Art Basel Fairs.
A version of this article first appeared in print in our 2025 Winter issue under the headline “Next Big Things.” Subscribe to the magazine.