The lines in Etsuko Nakatsuji’s paintings do something strange. They wind, bow, curl, geometrically precise yet emotionally unguarded. They wink at the aesthetics of advertising, with their pop colors and graphic blocking. The result lands somewhere in the shape of a person, or at least person-ish. Possibly a mythological specter or a beloved cartoon character? Perhaps both, and something more?

For over sixty years, Nakatsuji has been a vital presence in postwar Japanese avant-garde art. Yet, incredibly, Where are you from? marks her first-ever solo exhibition in the U.S. (as well as her first time showing with Silverlens). This little-big exhibition of recent paintings and screenprints by the octogenarian feels less like a debut and more like an uncovering.

Beneath the strange silhouettes is a lifelong investigation of the humanoid form and its infinite implications. Nakatsuji’s paintings carry something of the soft tension found in her early sculptures and installations, first made as dolls for her children. In the 1960s, she began sewing fabric figures from leftover bedspreads and hanging them from the ceiling of her apartment. She was raising kids, working full-time as a graphic designer, and making objects that didn’t quite belong to art, design, or toys. Over time, those soft bodies became her bizarre and sprawling poco-pin installations. Nakatsuji, a mother and a progenitor, built a world both uncanny and tender. 

She met her husband, the long-revered, late Gutai artist Sadamasa Motonaga, in art school, and they shared a love of the language of play. But her own work never reached for Gutai's theatrics. Nakatsuji’s art floats on a cloud of its own: between work and home, childhood and spirit.

– Words by Katey Acquaro

After working as an advertising designer, Nakatsuji Etsuko (b. 1937, Takaishi, Osaka) held her first solo exhibition at Tokyo Gallery in 1963, and has since held solo exhibitions in various locations. She has been active for over 60 years in a variety of fields, including painting, sculpture, and printmaking, with the human form as her motif, and has received international acclaim, winning the Grand Prize at the Contemporary Print Competition in 1998 and the Grand Prix at the Bratislava International Children’s Book Exhibition in 1999.