Nao Kikuchi “1897”

6/7 (Sat)-7/5 (Sat), 2025
Opening hours: 12:00-19:00 (Wed-Sat)
Closed on Sun, Mon, Tue and National Holidays
Reception: Saturday, June 7, 18:00-19:00


"A Work in Between — On Nao Kikuchi’s Solo Show 1897"
Text by Shinya Sugawara (Art Critic and Theorist)


During the COVID-19 lockdown in Germany, Nao Kikuchi spent long stretches of time in her room, which made her acutely aware of the boundaries between inside and outside, and between self and others. As a result, motifs related to boundaries—like windows and doors—began to appear more frequently in her work.
While walking through public spaces, she photographed fragments of architecture that caught her attention, then used these photos as a starting point to create highly abstracted drawings via digital tools. These drawings were then developed into ceramic works. Born out of this process, her pieces seem to live in the “in-between” spaces—not only between inside and outside, but also between site and image, analog and digital, and figuration and abstraction.
Her practice also unfolds between painting and ceramics. While she’s currently known for her ceramic work, she originally studied painting at Tama Art University in Tokyo and worked primarily in that medium. Yet even then, her focus wasn’t on the visual illusions typical of painting, but on the material qualities often overlooked—like the shadows formed by thick layers of paint or the physical depth of the canvas. This sensitivity to materiality became the spark that led her to ceramics.
Still, her ceramics maintain a strong connection to painting. Instead of being placed on horizontal pedestals as ceramics often are, her works are hung on walls, keeping a verticality similar to paintings. The rich surface textures, created through glazing and other techniques, also evoke painterly associations. She even draws inspiration not just from architectural motifs but also from symbolic shapes—like the spade forms found in paintings by American artist Richard Diebenkorn around 1980—further reinforcing the link between the two mediums.
In this way, she moves fluidly across boundaries—between inside and outside, analog and digital, figuration and abstraction, painting and ceramics—situating herself in the “in-between” to develop her practice. Her works invite viewers into that same ambiguous space, offering a quiet but resonant experience of being in-between.


Nao Kikuchi
Born in 1988 in Tochigi, Japan.
Based in Karlsruhe, Germany.
Selected exhibitions include COMMAND (2025, Goya Curtain, Tokyo); Find a Spot Zwischen Räumen (2025, t.a.s., Vienna); On a very quiet morning, on the same piece of toast (2025, Adams and Ollman, Portland); What else? (2025, GALLERY ANN MAZZOTTI, Basel); Bitter Arcadia (2025, Galerie Crone, Vienna); and Game (2023, Trust, Vienna).