Maso Nakahara

Floating Through Time

★★★★☆

On until 4 October 2025

Houldsworth’s programme doesn’t get the recognition it may deserve, perhaps because so much of it looks ‘outsider’ as a matter of branding. Nakahara’s mix of studied naïveté and accidental surrealism is a case in point. Biblical floods, the comet’s fall, and the odd tsunami mercilessly toss his protagonists about before the painter makes for them a life raft of cherry blossom. The canvases, small enough to protest innocence, are disarming enough. Their sculptural companions, like the pair of child lovers in a birdcage, turn sickly ‘cute’ like a Labubu. They speak over the wind’s rush with childlike ennui of an artist making work solely for himself.


notes and notices are short and curt exhibition reviews. Read more:

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doesn't work

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Fad aesthetics for fad ideas.

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