Installation view of Banquet of Life: Nihonga Paintings by Daisuke Nakano at Ippodo Gallery

Banquet of Life: Nihonga Paintings by Daisuke Nakano
Closing Saturday, April 18, 2026
35 N Moore Street, NYC

These are the final days to catch Banquet of Life: Nihonga Paintings by Daisuke Nakano at Ippodo Gallery, on view through April 18. In this captivating exhibition, eleven new works mark a pivotal passage through the seasons, as Daisuke Nakano celebrates the natural world in luminous detail. From landscapes blanketed in shimmering snow, to the delicate threshold of the spring thaw, and onward into full bloom, each painting reflects the quiet transformation and vitality of flora and fauna.

Native to Kyoto and a master of Nihonga painting traditions, Daisuke Nakano (b. 1974) draws upon historical Japanese image-making to paint bright scenes of nature in a state of undisturbed purity. Each pigment is ground from rare and precious minerals mixed with nikawa, deer-collagen glue, and placed upon a background of gold and silver leaf on washi paper in keeping with the methods developed in Japan for centuries. Nakano’s influences draw primarily from paradigms codified during the height of Edo (1615–1868) aesthetics, which often centered imagined landscapes and the life teeming therein.

Nakano stands out as a luminary force among those few remaining Nihonga traditionalists today, evoking classical ideas and pushing them to their limits of color, composition, and craftsmanship. His scenes are overflowing with flourishes of complementary colors and dynamic interplay of lively bodies of birds, insects and flowers. Though filled to the point of bursting, Nakano’s canvases strike a balance even as forms and colors overlap with spirited energy. Each line—the primary pictorial tool of Nihonga painters—captures personality and movement with animated grace.

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