Game

The form of the works Nao shows In this exhibition, are derived from architectural motifs and symbols used in playing cards. These motifs are removed from their familiar context and reinterpreted in a variety of ways. Her works tread a fine line that still allows us to sense the roots of their origins. The works, with their detailed surfaces and elegant forms, seduce the eye into an entranced state of seeing, through which, after a while, a flickering of a light from an ideal world reveals itself, from which these works spring and whisper to us. Nao writes in her own words : Based on my own memories of a particular place... ...They reflect a longing for distant places. In my work, these motifs symbolize "open portals" that point a way into the separated world. I think "open portals" is a very apt expression for her works. The work passes through various dimensions and levels of transformation until it breaks through to our material world as molded burnt earth. Released from the spatial, into the spiritual, into the drawing and back into space as a body. I think that Nao's works exude a scent of this world behind the veil. To me, they seem like fragments that, like the black monolith from "2001: A Space Odyssey", have fallen from an ideal world into our divided material one. In her works, I also sense the transformative potential that was also inherent in the walks of the Situationist International, for example. Experiencing familiar reality in a new perspective and giving it form. Nao's works also seem to me to possess this aspect through the fusion of the material and the immaterial/ideal. The medium (clay), canvas (surface) and frame (motif) unfold inseparably into a new form whose wholeness is content. An animated earth.