Kyoji Nagatani

Ab Initio

2019

...Dear Nagatani, I am really happy about this upcoming solo exhibition of yours in Milan, before your return to Japan. I have known you for a long time and I have been able to witness your constant wandering between Italy and Japan, traces of which can be perceived in your works: along with a connection to Japanese tradition the formal artistic taste for contemporary sculpture. Of your work I appreciate the rigorous and essential elaboration and the reflection on the relationship between opposites and the meaning of volumes and surfaces: I am sure that this "homecoming" of yours will have new expressive possibilities in store for you. A warm greeting and the wish to continue with intensity your research and your artistic work. Arnaldo Pomodoro, October 20, 2021 ...Thus the greeting of one great master of sculpture to another. And in the same way we want to celebrate, with this "last exhibition" that Kyoji Nagatani grants to Italy, the conclusion of a 40-year Grand Tour. Nagatani has met, among others, Azuma, Francesco Messina, Arnaldo Pomodoro, Emilio Greco, Umberto Mastroianni, Giuliano Vangi, Floriano Bodini and Giacomo Manzù. In the 1990s his research continued and became a mirror and reflection of everyday life. Some of his works such as Pietre Oniriche, Astrolabium, Sospiro del Cosmo, Dono di Nettuno and Motore del Tempo symbolize the fundamental passages of this period. The questions Nagatani asks are: Where do we come from? Where are we? Where are we going? The answer is a journey that crosses paths and finds different forms, but is always consistent with the same urgency to understand our position on earth. For Nagatani, the artist and the craftsman, the poet and the writer are those who work using their talents to create an object that answers a question of truth, and which must be returned to society to share research and evolution, so that it does good to society itself. It is through the exhibition that this restitution takes place, in museums and art spaces open to the public. The characteristics of the artwork are generosity, respect and acceptance for all as is the case with nature. The artist tries to approach the best, without demanding perfection, feeling pleasure and not pain, but enjoying wholeness, the result of interpenetration between shadow and light. Nagatani believes this is the truth, what connects the parts. Beyond the figurative, beyond the abstract, beyond duality. Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)