Ateliers Courbet is pleased to announce Shuji Nakagawa Mokkougei’s first solo exhibition in the United States, featuring new works by the revered Japanese wood crafter.

In celebration of the gallery’s decade-long collaboration with the artist, the exhibition will unveil new pieces resulting from Nakagawa-san’s ongoing dialogue with Courbet, alongside three sculptural marquetry pieces that were previously exhibited in the 2023 Museum exhibition ‘Visionaries: Making Another Perspective’ curated by Noriko Kawakami at the Kyocera Museum of Art in Kyoto, Japan. Each of the artist’s pieces is a unique sculptural object that exemplifies his sought-after woodwork and embodies the craftsmanship legacy and cultural heritage that he is carrying on.

A seventh-generation master wood crafter and sculptor, Shuji Nakagawa Mokkougei carries on Kyoto's highly-regarded marquetry and wood crafting tradition. His body of work is a tribute to his country's craftsmanship legacy and its work ethos, and reflects the culture of humility and appreciation that is shared amongst master artisans of all disciplines in Japan.

Though rooted in craftsmanship legacy and cultural heritage, Nakagawa's work breaks out of the tradition’s molds. Expanding upon the time-honored techniques that were passed down from his father, the artist taps into his individuality, voicing his artistic ideas through nonfunctional sculptural forms of larger scale.

On view in this exhibition, the ‘Marquetry’ series results from the ‘Masa-Awase’ time-honored technique, which involves carefully observing and meticulously aligning the grains of the timber pieces at a particular angle to minimize the wood’s natural movements through time. Crafting each work in cedar wood, the artist’s work reflects his veneration for the chosen material and its cultural significance, as Japanese Cedar was not naturally grown but became accessible in Japan due to a postwar afforestation policy to replenish lost forests.

Alongside the Marquetry series, Nakagawa will unveil ‘Yorishiro,’ a collection of wooden vessels meticulously handcrafted from Lignified Japanese Cedar, known in Japan as ‘Jindai-Sugi'.

The artist's new works include the WAVE series of sculptural wooden buckets inspired by Alvar Aalto vases. The series is a remarkable example of Shuji-san’s artisanal dexterity, the vessels were intricately crafted from bishu-hinoki (Japanese cypress) and koya-maki (Japanese umbrella pine). In these collections, the artisans utilize ‘Tagamono,’ the process of fastening wooden slats in a circle using a hoop called a taga and shaping the slats with a block plane until they become a unified object.

Hailing from a long lineage of marquetry masters, seventh-generation Nakagawa honed his craft under the mentoring of his father, Living National Treasure, Kiyotsugu Nakagawa, in Kyoto. Kiyotsugu-san's work has been bestowed many awards and honorific recognitions, such as “Important Intangible Cultural Property.” Presently, only four workshops remain in Kyoto producing wooden tubs, compared to the approximately 250 workshops in the past.

While he continues to assist his father at the family's workshop in Kyoto, Nakagawa has now built a comprehensive body of work of his own and established his personal practice in the serene countryside of Lake Shiga near Kyoto.

Today the artist creates and fabricates scarce pieces for devoted collectors around the world. Nakagawa's wood pieces are sought after both for their remarkably soft surfaces and the seamless curves of their silhouettes. His work has been exhibited in museums across Japan and Europe and is part of significant private and institutional collections.

Shuji Nakagawa Mokkougei’s exhibition will be on view through August 30th, 2024, and will run alongside a solo exhibition by Valéria Nascimento.