Naoki Tomita – Fast-Landscape

Maho Kubota Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Naoki Tomita, featuring approximately ten new paintings of suburban and Tokyo landscapes, along with three prints, marking the first time the artist has shown work in this medium.

Tomita is known for his distinctive brushwork, carefully placing each stroke of oil paint to create an image from the essential element of color. Since his debut, he has consistently focused on landscapes and portraits of ordinary people, depicting varied scenes such as roadside views in the Kanto region, parking lots, back alleys, and images encountered during his travels. His process, in which he photographs real landscapes and then translates those images onto canvas, has touched audiences across cultural and national boundaries.

The exhibition title “Fast-Landscape” is inspired by the sociological concept of Fast-Fudoka — closely related to the idea of McDonaldization in terms of cultural and landscape homogenization — which describes the spread of suburban chain stores and large shopping malls across Japan, leading to the loss of distinctive local scenery and culture.

Tomita was born and continues to work in Toride, Ibaraki Prefecture, a suburban town northeast of Tokyo. These environments have been central to his daily life and artistic practice, even though they are sometimes described negatively. By engaging with such places through painting, he presents his own standpoint and reflects the reality of how we perceive the world today.

His works often depict twilight and dawn, the so-called magic hours, or moments when artificial light and natural phenomena intersect. Snowy tracks lit by the glow of a casual dining restaurant chain, or everyday scenes imbued with atmosphere and seasonality, reveal a sensibility that recalls the work of Hasui Kawase, the Taisho- and Showa-era printmaker who gave emotional depth to familiar landscapes. In a similar way, Tomita offers a new perspective on contemporary scenery through his personal sensibility.

In this exhibition, the artist experimented for the first time with constructing a lightweight steel-frame skeleton within the gallery space and hanging paintings on it. As viewers move around, over, or beneath this structure, they may catch glimpses of the reverse side of the paintings or encounter them from unusual angles and heights. This experience recalls the feeling of unexpectedly discovering a new view when peering into a side street. Like children exploring vacant lots or construction sites in the suburbs, visitors are invited to engage visually and physically with the environment and to rediscover the world in fresh ways.

Gallery hours Tue-Sat 12:00 – 19:00
closed Sun, Mon and National Holidays

Exhibition Duration 18.09. – 22.10.2025

www.mahokubota.com

Location:
Maho Kubota Gallery
2-4-7 Jingumae Shibuya-ku
150-0001 Tokyo
Japan