minoru nomata

Minoru Nomata, a 69-year-old painter, is a singular, enigmatic Japanese artist living in the serene Setagaya neighborhood of Tokyo. His life’s work is dedicated to metaphysical painting, drawing inspiration from European masters like Giovanni Piranesi, Caspar David Friedrich, and Giorgio de Chirico, as well as Russian Constructivism and Soviet architecture. His primary forms — spheres, cubes, cones, spires, and rocks stacked between giant calipers — become architectonic, utopian structures. Titles like Continuum, Ghost, and Gekka (meaning “under moonlight”) evoke an oxygenated atmosphere in a softly lit but cosmically remote world. Nomata’s artwork creates a unique vision of the future through a vocabulary of imaginary architectural forms, blending Eastern and Western influences in the context of contemporary dystopia and climate change.   ALL ARTWORK COPYRIGHT AND COURTESY OF MINORU NOMATA, PHOTOS COPYRIGHT WHITE CUBE, THEO CHRISTELIS