“An eclectic overview of the work of Sadamasa Motonaga from 1966-2009”

Published to accompany Motonaga’s solo show which opened the new gallery space and presented forty works including acrylic canvases, works on paper and sculptures from 1966 to 2009.

This book charts Motonaga’s practice across these varied mediums and presents new ways of conceiving them.

When Sadamasa Motonaga arrived in New York in 1966, he started painting again in a ‘traditional’ manner, discovering acrylic paints and the airbrush, and limiting his inspiration to classical two-dimensional surfaces. He returned to conceiving shapes once more: shapes that come before colour, shapes that can restrain red and green, his favourite hues.

Motonaga changed this mode of expression during his year in New York, 1966–1967, partly because the paint he had used in Japan was not available there, and perhaps in the face of the contingencies of the times: Abstract Expressionism had given way to thriving Pop Art, Hard Edge painting and Kinetic Art.