Inaugural Exhibition
Exhibition Details
Night Trees
February 9, 2024 - June 7, 2024
To complement the artworks of Megumi Nagai, Structural Color Gallery's exhibition space in Brooklyn has been transformed into a forest. Through the transportation and installation of fallen trees from upstate New York, we embrace and evoke the spirit of Nagai's preferred medium. A respite from busy city life, this exhibition presents a startling opportunity to pause and engage. Allow your senses to change and your focus to shift as you enter the silence of the forest. By embracing these changes you find yourself immersed in details that might previously have gone unnoticed. In this sharpness and silence, you might find true contemplation and connection. The forest, however, is not only a place of comfort. Fantasies, nightmares, and disturbing beauties also hide among the night trees...
Driven by a desire to both express and surprise herself, Japanese-born artist Megumi Nagai works across a variety of traditions with her own distinct style. Painting with oils on wood, Nagai allows the natural grains and textures of the medium to guide her artistic process. In her own words, "Every time I see a slab of wood, it is as though I am meeting a new person." Inspired by her dreams and inner fantasies, Nagai's paintings are often surreal and confrontational, as well as humorous. She incorporates imagery from Japanese fables and Edo-period artists in order to express her singular vision of the world. In her words, contemplation entwines with the haunting beauty of nature to usher viewers into unexpected places.
Born in Shimonoseki, Japan in 1951, Nagai received her degree from Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music in 1975. She lives and works in New York City. Her work is included in the collection of the Brooklyn Museum.
Special Thanks
This exhibition was made possible with the help of Steve Wedge, Peter Bradley, and Gilbert M. O'Sullivan of Charlton, New York, as well as Megan Gatton and Bradley Lewis. Our expert photographer and photo editor Jacob Rubin of Yellow Glove Gallery.
Megumi Nagai
I want to create places where you and I have never been before - spaces where once you enter, you are lost in darkness. And in the darkness, you play, you feel a sense of fun and joy, forgetting you ever want to leave.
My idea is a collage. It is about the meeting of the unexpected. I take ordinary figures from nature, break them apart then reconstruct the elements in a new and mysterious way.
Nature is a great inspiration to me, especially as I wander the woods. I find something new in the woods that inspires me every day. I can paint a tree as a tree and still deliver my fantasy. My painting is not a real tree but the feeling of the tree is true.
My paintings tell stories. And when I finish a painting, I do not own that story anymore. The stories exist on their own. I always feel that way. The stories live through your interpretation and your thoughts about them, and they continue in some way even if you are not aware of their presence.
