Shinya Nakazato

Japanese artist Shinya Nakazato has a background in both photography and painting: first studying photography in Japan, before attending the Pratt Institute in New York. His works evidence this duality, and he plays with layering, depth and focus, mixing the two mediums and blurring the lines between them. Indeed, at first glance, many of his photographs look like paintings.

Much of his work is graffiti-esque, with wide, textured brush strokes, inspired by his surroundings in Brooklyn; he even uses the space of a studio as his canvas. Often choosing a precise object to be his focal point, Nakazato creates fuzzy spaces which, on his large prints, tend towards abstraction. He also started adding layers of painted glass or wooden plates and panels into the studio space, creating images that have been compared to cubism and abstract expressionism.

His photographs constantly evolve, but with a continuity striking to those who follow his work; in 2017 Nakazato started printing his photos before painting directly on them, using the photograph as the structure. When looking at these images, the mixture of mediums, textures, objects and colours run in to one another with wonderful movement so that your eye never rests in one place for long. In fusing so many elements in different layers, Nakazato hopes to - and successfully does - achieve a new form of spatial expression.