Review: “Kazuo Nakamura: Blue Dimensions” (AGO)
March 7, 2024 | Helen Kwong
“Kazuo Nakamura: Blue Dimensions” opened at the Art Gallery of Ontario on 28 January 2024 and features 15 paintings by the Japanese-Canadian abstract artist Kazuo Nakamura (1962-2002). Marking twenty years since the painter’s last major retrospective at the museum, the ongoing exhibition surveys Nakamura’s evolving practice from the 1950s — when he was a founding member of the Toronto-based abstract art collective Painters Eleven (fl. 1953-1960) — until to the 1980s, when his work became closely involved with numbers, patterns, and sequences. The official exhibition overview includes a quote from Nakamura himself:
“There’s a sort of fundamental pattern in all art and nature. In a sense, scientists and artists are doing the same thing. The world of pattern is a world we are discovering together.”
In the museum
I looked for signage; there was none – this obviously wasn’t one of the museum’s flagship exhibitions. That’s okay, we move on. I asked the welcome staff where to find the paintings:
“It’s here but like...one floor up.”
I look up at the ceiling that she’s pointing to.
“What I mean is, take these stairs up and it’ll be on your left.”
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Lorem Ipsum...
Detail of Nakamura’s signature
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If I may be critical for a moment....
Now, I’m no historian of Canadian art per se so perhaps I’m in no position to be critical. But as someone with a bit of training in the discipline, I noticed a couple red flags – the chief among them being John G. Hatch’s projections of Nakamura’s isolation
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