Gauging Torawo Nakagawa's art in "postscript" at Kyoto's Kodama Gallery is no easy undertaking. His paintings resist narrative cohesion and cultivate a certain hermeticism, all the while preserving an attractive visual dimension. Concerned as he is with a distinctive process of painting — a style founded in his concern for drawing, line, color and spatial relations or distortions — he nonetheless verges on alienating the viewer simply because his preoccupations are not conventionally shared by others.
One approach to Nakagawa's art is to try to reconcile the figurative and abstract elements; though this can be perilous. Trying to pick through the ruins of figuration to find something recognizable is fraught with uncertainty. And attempting to assemble the figurative elements piecemeal is unproductive.
In the most figurative work on show "Wanting to Black Out at Heart" (2011), you'll immediately see a skull skewered by a tree. But then, if you look at the work a little longer, you'll wonder if it really is a skull. Perhaps it is merely a few visual conventions that have been toyed with to make you interpret it that way.