16th Decembre 2023 – 7th January 2024
opening Saturday 16th December 2023, h 6pm

The collective exhibition NEJA-ism opens on Saturday 16 December 2023 at 6.00 pm at the Galleria Imagineria in Florence, in collaboration with Systema Gallery of Osaka.

The artists on show, the so-called NEJA, express their art as a bridge between past and present, between tradition and contemporary.

NEJA-ism (Neo Japonism) is in fact a constantly developing artistic movement that has a strong cultural imprint, which has its roots in ancient Japanese artistic traditions, but with an eye on Western artistic contaminations.

The concept is to appeal to neo-Japanese art, as does Katsu Ishida, pioneer of Systema Gallery who elaborates his works on Japanese paper with brush and ink and Western and Indian materials, impressing vibrations and the constant oscillation on the support of life and the world.

Ink (sumi), natural paint (gofun), mineral pigments, gold leaves are the precious materials used to capture the naked and raw expressions of Yuki Harada‘s children on Japanese paper: the works attract with their two-dimensional image, the beautiful contours and the appearance of the color of the pigment itself. It seems that the child’s chaotic changes in emotions and attitudes have been brought to light. Just when it looked like they were crying, they are laughing out loud.

ー“Kizami” is the process of carving images on a block of wood with a chisel, just like drawing with a brush. The wooden block is made of Japanese katsura wood, suitable for fine carving. Hakuseki Iwai directly sculpts the image he has in mind without preliminary drawing, therefore, all the pieces are originals, one of a kind. “Woman”, “Siting person”, “Mother and child”, “Family” with the theme of human love, and also “Flower” and “Fuji” with the theme of nature are drawn by repeatedly engraving the lines to express their “existence”, as if an inner voice came from deep within.

Waa Kitayabu began drawing on the commuter train, absorbing himself in the drawing and self-publishing his first art book (Hundred Thousand Faces) once he reached 100,000 sketches. Specialized in Noshitenten, a pencil drawing technique on canvas, which represents Japanese Zen, the inner world of one’s heart.

Shinji Nakabori, influenced by his guiding image Miroku-bosatsu-hanka-shiyui at the Koryu-ji Temple (Seated statue of a Buddhist saint, semi-inclined in meditation), became aware that his mission was to pursue and give shape to that “something” that reaches people’s hearts, transcending time and space.