Hervé HEUZÉ - Kiyoshi NAKAGAMI - Paintings of Light

Press release

Galerie Richard presents an exhibition by Hervé Heuzé and Kiyoshi Nakagami entitled ‘Paintings of Light’ from September 16 to 25, 2021. Hervé Heuzé takes up the challenge of translating the extreme brightness of the snowy high mountains with his black and white oil paintings. Self-taught painter Kiyoshi Nakagami sums up his approach by saying that he has only one objective as a painter: to represent light in painting. Galerie Richard has been representing the artist since 2003. Kiyoshi Nakagami is one of the most respected artists in Japan.

The common point between the blue paintings of underwater depths with fishing nets and his series of Mont-Blanc is the artist’s focus on the representation of light. The Mont-Blanc massif is a subject that he began in 2000. In 2019 he returned to take new photographs and became aware of the melting of glaciers and the decrease in snow cover. He therefore chose to deal indirectly with the theme of global warming by taking his old photographs and painting them in black and white with acrylic with strong contrasts and lower brightness that dramatize these landscapes and paintings with old photographs, remains of a vanished world. In his new oil paintings he was specifically concerned with the rendering of the extremity of brightness of the snowy massif. The difference in clarity and contrast between the two series is striking. The new series is very bright and provides a beautiful contemplative serenity.

Hervé Heuzé was born in Rouen in 1964 and lives and works in Normandy. Graduated from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Rouen, he regularly exhibits in Paris, New York and at contemporary art fairs. His works have been presented at the Musée de Nice, the Musée et Centre Contemporain de Montbéliard, the Emily Davis Gallery at the University of Akron, OH, USA… Winner of the Villa Medicis outside the walls in 1991, his paintings are in the collections of the Palais de l’Elysée, the Centrum Beeldende Kunst Rotterdam, the Centre d’Art et de Culture Borusan, Istambul, the Musée de Montbéliard and in the private collections of Christian Lacroix, the Jean Hamon Foundation, Richard P. Friedman, NY, Dr Mark A.Maggiani, Malta, Dr Med H.C. Hans Schieussner, Frankfurt am Main, Thierry Martinez, Paris…

Galerie Richard represents the artist since 2003. Kiyoshi Nakagami is one of the most respected artists in Japan.

“As a painter, there is nothing more difficult than to represent light in painting. The ones who can do that are the greatest painters, greatest artists.” – Kiyoshi Nakagami

He was not impressed by his colleagues except for James Turrell, whom he assisted during his installations in Japan. The public is invited to contemplate the disposition and the degradation of the density of light in the painting. This density varies from one work to another and its dispersion in the dark space. The light spreads through a series of sumptuous perfect gradations. Before reaching the focal point of light, it must pass through an undetermined vaporous material. The artist’s ability to reproduce the beauty of the diffusion of light in a painting has no equivalent. Because he considers that human being does not rule the Nature, he allows natural processes to develop in his paintings. These perfectly detailed paints are made without the use of brushes.

Nakagami was born in Shizuoka in 1949. His works are in the collections of the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo, the Museum of Modern Art in Osaka, the Museum of Modern Art in Yokohama, the Museum of Modern Art in Kamakura & Hayama, the Kanagawa Prefecture Gallery… Critics Donald Kuspit, Daniel Gauss, C.B. Liddell, Taney Roniger, Jonathan Goodman, Robert C. Morgan… have written about his exhibitions.