Nobuyuki Takahashi: お茶の時間 / take a break

Rena Bransten Gallery is please to present our second solo exhibition of Japanese painter Nobuyuki Takahashi. By deftly extracting the essence of his surrounding environment, Takahashi distills the landscape into its most essential component parts. The resulting paintings are both graphic and deceptively simple – with large areas devoted to open water and sky, a sense of calm and rest permeates the work and summons quiet contemplation.

While continuing to explore the landscape of Japan, many of the works in this latest collection of paintings are the result of Takahashi’s first trip to San Francisco in 2015, also his first time ever visiting the United States. Inspired not only by the landscape of the U.S., but by the laid-back atmosphere of Northern California, Takahashi found himself reflecting on his approach to painting, and these works embody his new-found desire to free himself from the rules dictating what a painting ‘should’ or ‘should not’ be.

Nobuyuki Takahashi was born in 1968 in Kanagawa, Japan. He graduated from Aichi Prefectural University of Fine Arts and Music in 1991. He has shown extensively throughout his native Japan over the past twenty plus years, in both group and solo exhibitions. His work is in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura and Hayama, among others. He currently lives and works in Zushi, in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan.