Depicting scenes such as a mysterious edifice towering over a vast, unfamiliar landscape, while somehow evoking feelings of nostalgia, the paintings of Nomata Minoru (b. 1955) cannot be simply labelled as scenes of imagination; rather, they are characterised by a distinctive world of the unreal that is tethered to the real. Terada Kotaro, who donated the works in this collection, was a great admirer of Nomata’s paintings. Beginning in the 1980s, Terada acquired works each year, eventually assembling the largest museum collection of Nomata’s work, comprising over forty representative paintings.
After studying design at Tokyo University of the Arts, Nomata worked as an art director at an advertising agency while he continued to paint. Since his first solo exhibition in 1986 at the Sagacho Exhibit Space, Tokyo, he has devoted himself to his work as a painter and he has mounted a number of solo exhibitions. He has attracted the attention of enthusiastic fans as an artist for those in the know. After presenting an online exhibition at White Cube, a renowned UK-based gallery, in 2020, Nomata joined the roster of the gallery’s artists, suddenly propelling him to the world stage.
This chain of events all began with a solo exhibition by Nomata that was mounted at Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery in 2004, concurrently with an exhibition by Wolfgang Tillmans. The current director of White Cube was visiting Japan at the time, and with the passage of years her memories of that solo exhibition bore fruit, leading to today’s international attention.
Nomata’s first solo exhibition in the special exhibition galleries (Gallery 1 and Gallery 2) is an opportunity to present not only works in Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery’s collection, but the entire scope of Nomata Minoru’s work, from his early period to his latest works, in an expansive space. Beginning with a single collector’s eye for his work, Nomata has had a long relationship with the museum, and he is now reaching a global audience. We hope that you will enjoy this exhibition, which can be described as a tale woven from a number of fortuitous events, like a constellation created by connecting stars in the sky.