Exhibitions

Ulala Imai

AMAZING February 6 - April 3, 2021 Appointment Nonaka Hill is pleased to present AMAZING, a selection of recent paintings by Japanese artist Ulala Imai in her first solo exhibition in the United States. Bananas don’t really go with Darth Vader, except in parenthood. The exhibition title AMAZING derives from Ulala Imai’s daughter’s school project to name... Read more

Hosai Matsubayashi XVI & Trevor Shimizu

November 14, 2020 - January 30, 2021 Nonaka-Hill is pleased to present a two-artist exhibition, Hosai Matsubayashi XVI and Trevor Shimizu. The exhibition brings tea ceremony ceramics produced by Matsubayashi at his Asahi-yaki (Asahi Pottery) kiln in Uji, Kyoto, Japan together with landscape and nature paintings by Shimizu, produced recently in Dobbs Ferry, New York. This symbiotic... Read more

Megumi Shinozaki

PAPER EDEN November 14 - December 23, 2020 Born 1981, Tochigi Prefecture, Japan Founder of Edenworks, Tokyo, 2009 to present Lives & works in Tokyo Exploring the wide-ranging potentials of flowers and plants, Shinozaki often combines natural elements with diverse items with her highly original sensibility to realize creations in various engagements such as store decorations and window... Read more

Sterling Ruby and Masaomi Yasunaga

September 19 - October 31, 2020 Nonaka-Hill is pleased to present Sterling Ruby and Masaomi Yasunaga, bringing together two of the most innovative makers in ceramics today. The exhibition finds parallels between two studio practices developed an ocean apart; Ruby in Los Angeles, California, United States and Yasunaga in Iga, Mie Prefecture, Japan. Every object in... Read more

Kaz Oshiro

96375 July 11 - September 5, 2020 Nonaka-Hill is pleased to present “Kaz Oshiro: 96375”, featuring selected works from 2003 to 2020. Los Angeles based artist, Kaz Oshiro, was born and raised in Okinawa, Japan. Immersed in transposed American culture since day one of his life, objects of nostalgia from this immigrant artist’s overseas youth may look... Read more

Sofu Teshigahara

February 8 - April 11, 2020 Nonaka-Hill is pleased to present a solo exhibition of works by Sofu Teshigahara (1900-1979). The artist’s first exhibition in Los Angeles introduces a selection of rarely seen metal sculptures and calligraphic works produced from the 1950s to the 1970s. The artist was founder of the Sogetsu School of Ikebana (1927... Read more

Keita Matsunaga

December 7, 2019 - January 25, 2020 Nonaka-Hill is pleased to present new ceramic works by Japanese artist Keita Matsunaga in his first solo exhibition in the United States. The exhibition is on view through January 25th, 2020. Born in 1986, Keita Matsunaga describes his generation as one which is concerned with all kinds of ideas of... Read more

A show about an architectural monograph

The Work of Kisho Kurokawa Capsule, Metabolism, Spaceframe, Metamorphose December 7, 2019 - January 25, 2020 A show about an architectural monograph: The Work of Kisho Kurokawa subtitled: Capsule, Metabolism, Spaceframe, Metamorphose published by: Bijutsu Shuppan-Sha, LTD in the year: 1970 designed by: Kiyoshi Awazu with photographs by: Tomio Ohashi and several other photographers and contributors * including a poster by: Kiyoshi Awazu and a musical... Read more

Tatsumi Hijikata

October 12 - November 30, 2019 Tatsumi Hijikata was the founder of Ankoku Butoh (literally meaning, dance of darkness), widely known and practiced today, some 60 years later, as Butoh. Hijikata arrived to Tokyo from the Northern rural Tohoku region in 1952 and worked blue-collar jobs to support his dance pursuits. As his rural accent set... Read more

Eikoh Hosoe

Collaborations with Tatsumi Hijikata October 12 - November 30, 2019 The celebrated photographer, Eikoh Hosoe (1933) was a long-time friend and collaborator of Tatsumi Hijikata, having first met in 1959 at Hijikata’s debut Ankoku Butoh performance, Forbidden Colors (Kinjiki), based on the novel by Yukio Mishima, with whom Hosoe would also create significant collaborations. Hosoe was then a member of... Read more

Yutaka Matsuzawa

Co-curated by Alan Longino and Reiko Tomii Originated by Yale Union, Portland, Oregon September 7 - October 5, 2019 Nonaka-Hill is pleased to host an exhibition by Yutaka Matsuzawa (b. 1922; d. 2006, Shimo Suwa, Japan). Known as one of the leading Conceptual artists in Japan, Matsuzawa has been included in some of the most significant exhibitions in recent decades, such as Global Conceptualism in 1999 at Queens Museum... Read more

Yutaka Matsuzawa through the lens of Mitsutoshi Hanaga

September 7 - October 5, 2019 Nonaka-Hill have organized Yutaka Matsuzawa through the lens of Mitsutoshi Hanaga, a small presentation of the photographer who documented the avant-garde in 1960s Japan, underground and youth culture, and such social issues as pollution and political activism. The firsts for both of them on the West Coast, these exhibitions together... Read more

Takuro Tamayama & Tiger Tateishi

July 27 - August 31, 2019 Nonaka-Hill is pleased to present a two-artist exhibition, Takuro Tamayama and Tiger Tateishi . The show features a new installation, video and sculpture works by Takuro Tamayama, brought together with Tiger Tateishi’s large oil painting Rotating Fuji from 1991 and selected prints dating from 1973-1981. Takuro Tamayama and Tiger Tateishi,... Read more

Kunié Sugiura

June 1 - July 20, 2019 Kunié Sugiura (Born 1942, Nagoya, Japan. Lives and works in New York, NY) In a practice spanning over fifty years, Kunié Sugiura has negotiated between painting and photography, discovering and expanding through continual experimentation. At Nonaka-Hill, the artist’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles, Sugiura presents hand-painted photo-canvases from her... Read more

Masaomi Yasunaga

June 1 - July 20, 2019 Masaomi Yasunaga (Born 1982, Osaka Japan. Living and working in Iga, Mie Prefecture, Japan) In a gesture which has little precedence, Masaomi Yasunaga removed clay from his ceramic forms, and builds his sculptures using glaze as the primary structural element. At Nonaka-Hill, the artist’s first solo exhibition outside of Asia,... Read more

Miho Dohi

April 13 - May 25, 2019 Miho Dohi manipulates familiar basic materials, including fabric, yarn, papier-mâché, and wood, along with metals such as brass, copper and wire, to form new components to be assembled into sculpture. Dohi connects these diverse elements – painted, carved or twisted – while constantly changing direction of her new objects’ center... Read more

Wataru Tominaga

April 13 - May 25, 2019 A fashion and textile designer, also trained in fine art, Wataru Tominaga builds his distinctive textiles atop readymade fabrics which have universal, genderless motifs; paisleys, florals, plaids and ginghams. The artist manipulates these materials through twisting, pleating and stitching the fabrics before he adds a top layer of graphic information... Read more

Naotaka Hiro

April 13 - May 25, 2019 Naotaka Hiro’s practice is rooted in the unknown, exploring the body – specifically his own – in an attempt to better understand our physical form. His artworks cannot be defined by their finished appearance, but are better understood as objects resulting from prescribed performative processes, which the artist refers to... Read more

Parergon: Japanese Art of the 1980s and 1990s

Curated by Mika Yoshitake in conjunction with Blum & Poe, Los Angeles February 17 - April 6, 2019 Nonaka-Hill, Los Angeles February 17–April 6, 2019; Public opening: Sunday, February 17, 3-6pm Blum & Poe, Los Angeles Part I: February 14-March 23, 2019; Public opening: Thursday, February 14, 6-8pm Part II: April 6-May 19, 2019; Public opening: Saturday, April 6, 6-8pm Nonaka-Hill is pleased to present, in conjunction with... Read more

Tadaaki Kuwayama

January 12 - February 16, 2019 Nonaka-Hill is pleased to announce a solo exhibition by New York based artist, Tadaaki Kuwayama. The exhibition will be his first on the West Coast. Ideas, thoughts, philosophy, reasons, meanings, even the humanity of the artist, do not enter into my work at all. There is only the art itself.... Read more

Toshio Matsumoto

November 17 - December 22, 2018 Nonaka-Hill is pleased to present a solo exhibition of works by Toshio Matsumoto from November 17 – December 22, 2018. Matsumoto Toshio (born 1932) is a Japanese film director and video artist. After graduating from the University of Tokyo, where he majored in aesthetics, Matsumoto began working at Shinriken Films,... Read more

Kentaro Kawabata

September 22 - November 10, 2018 Nonaka-Hill is pleased to present a solo exhibition of Japanese artist Kentaro Kawabata. The exhibition of thirteen works, all produced in porcelain, are from four ongoing series. Six works titled “Knot Face” are large platter forms constructed with concentric ropes of soft porcelain, coiled outwards and upwards into a shallow... Read more

Kansuke Yamamoto

September 22 - November 10, 2018 Nonaka-Hill is pleased to present a solo exhibition of works by Kansuke Yamamoto from September 22 to November 10, 2018. Kansuke Yamamoto, a Surrealist poet and photographer, was born in Nagoya in 1914 and died there in 1987. Yamamoto’s father, Goro Yamamoto, was a photographer working in the Pictorialist style... Read more

Kazuo Kadonaga

Wood / Paper / Bamboo / Glass July 21 - September 8, 2018 Nonaka-Hill is pleased to present sculpture by Kazuo Kadonaga, produced in the materials wood, paper, bamboo and glass, between the years 1977 & 1999. Kadonaga, who descends from a forestry family, chose instead to become an artist in the late 1960s. He tried painting at first, but around 1970 Kadonaga... Read more

Kimiyo Mishima

Paintings May 18 - July 14, 2018 Nonaka-Hill is pleased to present the first Los Angeles solo exhibition of paintings by Kimiyo Mishima, a contemporary Japanese artist. Born in Osaka in 1932, Mishima was a child during WWII, and started painting in her teens as the war ended. Mishima recalls emerging from an air raid shelter to... Read more