Another Layers
mjk-staffNaoko Sekine
April 17 (Thu) – May 4 (Sun), 2025
Closed on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays
Curator: Ryu Niimi (Curator, Professor at Musashino Art University, and Director of the University Museum & Library)
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MJK Gallery is pleased to present the first solo exhibition by Naoko Sekine.
This exhibition showcases a series of newly created works, composed with a conscious engagement with the spatial and conceptual framework of the gallery environment.
We are honored to welcome Professor Takashi Niimi of Musashino Art University—also Director of the University’s Museum and Library—as the exhibition curator. Professor Niimi has contributed a critical text contextualizing Sekine’s practice within broader discourses of contemporary painting.
We cordially invite you to experience this important exhibition.
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The Depths of Painting and Its Eternal Return
—The Intensity of Naoko Sekine
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Painting, as a medium, has long been regarded—particularly in the Western tradition—as a “means to depict,” exemplified by religious or historical painting. It functioned as a representational art that employed illusionistic techniques to render motifs as faithfully as possible.
However, following the invention of photography, painting gradually turned toward expressions unique to itself, giving rise to movements such as Impressionism, Cubism, and Abstract Expressionism.
By the latter half of the twentieth century—particularly in the wake of Duchamp and Warhol—the very medium of painting came under recursive scrutiny through the emergence of Conceptual Art and Pop Art.
In this way, painting has continually been forced to interrogate its own identity. And yet, despite such persistent questioning, it has refused to relinquish the act of depiction. In this lies the singularity of painting as a form of expression.
The work of Naoko Sekine is thoroughly imbued with this orientation toward questioning the very foundations of painting as a medium.
Rather than simply reproducing motifs, her paintings critically engage the act of painting itself.
Her brushwork is at times impulsive, at times contemplative.
What becomes evident is not a will to portray the external world, but rather a compulsion to delve deeply into the interior of the self.
Standing before her paintings, one encounters a particular sense of “depth.”
This is not a spatial depth in the conventional sense, but a psychic, temporal, and ontological depth.
To experience such depth in the context of contemporary painting is anything but ordinary.
…Indeed, the “depth” in painting is not something that demands invocation of mystics like P. D. Ouspensky. Rather, it is something that discloses itself when one confronts the surface of the canvas with one’s own volition.
At such a moment, the pictorial plane ceases to be merely a surface, and emerges as a profound locus where space, time, and selfhood fold into and layer upon one another.
What appears there is no longer a visual object per se.
It is the raw trace of gesture, lines drawn like veins, layers of pigment accreted like geological strata, paint dripping with the force of a howl.
These are no longer works in the conventional sense—they are the very testimony of the artist’s existence.
In viewing her paintings, the word “testimony” inevitably arises.
Yet this testimony does not seek to assert anything. It simply is. It is presence-as-witness.
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As noted earlier, to practice “painting” in the present age is a task of considerable difficulty.
This difficulty is not merely technical or stylistic, but ethical and volitional.
That Sekine’s paintings, while referencing numerous historical precedents, never lapse into imitation, quotation, or pastiche—but instead sustain an autonomous painterly movement—is a testament to her ongoing effort to excavate her own interior “depths.”
What we must now look toward is not the image.
It is the site of painting, the trace of its becoming, and the presence that arises therein.
This exhibition, then, may well mark a moment of painting’s return.
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Ryu Niimi
(Professor, Musashino Art University / Director, University Museum and Library)
”Another Layers”
—Naoko Sekine
In a book I read last year by Juichi Yamagiwa, he mentions a point made by philosopher Augustin Berque: that the period when the Western art world embraced “perspective” overlapped with the era when Descartes proposed “I think, therefore I am.” This idea left a deep impression on me. It was a discussion about how the way we perceive space resembles how we conceptualize human existence. I have always regarded landscapes not merely as the expanse before our eyes, but as something that speaks, acts, and holds human interiority and concepts.
We often feel that this world exists as a given, but since it is something created by humans, I always sense there are invisible forms behind it. Today, human design extends even to genetics and artificial intelligence.
I also recall reading “The Silent Cosmology” by Japanese mathematician Toshio Niwa, where I was struck by the notion that “space” was something discovered by humans—there was a moment of that discovery. It made me wonder: how many types of spaces can we actually perceive today?
There is a book called Born on a Blue Day by Daniel Tammet, a British savant with synesthesia. When he sees numbers, he perceives them as having temperature, personality, size, color—qualities akin to those of living beings. What moved me most was something he said during a TED Talk: “Words are inherently aesthetic.” That line deeply touched me, and it expanded the way I understood and imagined numbers. We live in an era dominated by numbers, yet I always keep in mind the possibility of a different dimension, like a doorway we must not forget.
Reading Tammet’s work, and learning about Indian mathematician Ramanujan, makes me feel—even though I don’t have their special abilities—that if I let go of preconceptions and simply stand beside these ideas, they offer me new possibilities and raise profound questions.
In today’s world, images might be described as “images of images.” In relation to this, I believe we are also living in an age where meaning itself is in flux. The growing influence of AI further amplifies this, leveraging collective human cognition and operating within frameworks built on averages and numerical superiority. We cannot ignore this.
Yet, the aesthetic sensibility Tammet speaks of may not be something that can be visualized as an “image,” but I believe our bodies are still capable of perceiving it.
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Naoko Sekine
1999
Graduated from Musashino Art University, Department of Painting (Oil Painting Course)
2001
Completed the Master's Program in Fine Arts (Oil Painting Course) at Musashino Art University Graduate School
2013
Participant in the Japanese Government Overseas Study Program for Artists, studied in Paris, France
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[Solo Exhibitions]
2004
“Outside is…”（Gallery Q, Tokyo）
2007
“Drop” (YOKOI FINE ART, Nagoya)
2008
“The Garden” (YOKOI FINE ART, Nagoya)
2009
“The Garden, Part 2” (Gallery Gen, Tokyo)
2011
“The Garden – Inside Outside” (Gallery Gen, Tokyo)
2013
“Particles” (L’espace 71, Paris, France)
2014
“Another Side” (Gallery Gen, Tokyo)
2015
“The Garden – Between Invisible and Visible” (YOKOI FINE ART, Nagoya)
2017
“Another Garden” (YOKOI FINE ART, Nagoya)
2022
“Resonance of the Landscape” (art gallery closet, Tokyo)
2024
“Another Layers” (art gallery closet, Tokyo)
[Group Exhibitions]
2006
“Chaosmos ’05: Landscapes That Cannot Be Reached,” Sakura City Museum of Art
2007
“Labyrinth of Lines II: The Melody of Pencil and Graphite,” Meguro Museum of Art, Tokyo
2008
“Black, White and GRAY,” MA2 Gallery
“VOCA Exhibition 2008: The Vision of Contemporary Art – Emerging Artists in Two Dimensions,” The Ueno Royal Museum
2009
“I BELIEVE – Contemporary Art of Japan,” The Museum of Modern Art, Toyama
2010
“Doubles lumières,” Maison de la culture du Japon à Paris, France
2011
“MOT Annual 2011: Nearest Faraway – How to Measure the Depth of the World,” Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo
2012
“VOCA Exhibition 2012: The Vision of Contemporary Art – Emerging Artists in Two Dimensions,” The Ueno Royal Museum
2014
“MOT Collection Special Program Vol.2: Contacts – 20th Anniversary of the Museum,” Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo
“17th DOMANI: The Art of Tomorrow,” The National Art Center, Tokyo
2015
“Modern Splendor – Oita World Museum of Art,” Oita Prefectural Art Museum
“Permanent Exhibition: Francis Alÿs and Four Rooms,” Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo
2016
“VOCA Exhibition 2016: The Vision of Contemporary Art – Emerging Artists in Two Dimensions,” The Ueno Royal Museum
2017
“The Opportunity of Criticism,” Ryokurinkan, Saitama
2018
“Naoko Sekine | Mami Kosemura | Aiko Tezuka,” MA2 Gallery
2019
“MOT Collection: I’m Home / Nice to Meet You,” Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo
2020
“A Journey of Painting vol.5: Sink Deeply, Float Lightly – The Silent Activity,” MA2 Gallery
2022
“Two Transformations – Takefumi Matsutani and Naoko Sekine,” MA2 Gallery
2023
“Confused Waters – Kyotaro Hakamata | Tomoki Yasui | Nobuaki Onishi | Naoko Sekine,” MA2 Gallery
“KI-OKU HA TOKIKA,” SPIRAL
2024
“Goethe’s Hands: Transgression, Border Crossing, and Transcendence – Yoshio Sakagishi | Naoko Sekine | Kyoko Tokumaru | Rei Rus,” Musashino Art University, etc.
[Awards]
2008
Fuchu Art Museum Prize / VOCA Exhibition 2008
2002
Tokyo Wonder Wall Prize / Tokyo Wonder Wall Public Competition 2002
2023
Luxembourg Art Prize, Grand Prix
[Public Collections]
Fuchu Art Museum (Tokyo)
Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (MOT)
Taketa City Library (Oita Prefecture)
Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art
The Museum of Modern Art, Wakayama
Toyama Prefectural Museum of Art and Design