About four years ago, I started to question the neutrality and absoluteness of the white ground. For my solo exhibition at Taka Ishii Gallery Kyoto two years ago, I approached the white ground in a new way by “incorporating external forces.” I also mobilized the pictures technically by leaving the white used to fix lines and dirtied areas visible. After the exhibition was over, I decided to push the whites, which was scattered on the surface for corrective purposes, until they took on a peculiar function. I call this the “verbalization of whiteness”… Over the last two years, I have made pictures in which I cut up the lines and white grounds in great detail until I achieved an overall composition. I am now returning to simpler line/ground compositions. Of course, the adjacent and layered lines and whites have become more spatially and temporally complex than before.

- Nobuya Hoki

Hoki created the new “Nihon-Ga” (double line painting) featured in the current exhibition using commercial brushes after exclusively using self-produced brushes for the last 13 years. In these new works, he has also used and underpainted layer of blue-green for the first time. This new method and the related concept of white (i.e. the verbalization of whiteness) have made the relation of line and color in Hoki’s works more complex than ever before. In his previous works, lively and independent lines appeared simultaneously abstract and figurative against the white ground. In his new works, he has added a new dimension to line drawing by making the lines and fluid white and blue-green-colored grounds interact and influence each other. These interactions, between line and ground, produce unprecedented pictorial spaces. We hope you will take this opportunity to see the latest from Hoki, who continues to uniquely explore line drawing as a way to produce both flatness and depth.