WORKS IN LA

THE FRIDGE

For All info contact:
juliendavid@gmail.com
646 785 5945

11 East 78th Street
Fourth Floor
New York, NY

 

JOJI NAKAMURA

Nakamura’s practice moves between recognizable figures and abstract forms. Recurring motifs and soft, cloud-like color shifts define his language. His imagery emerges instinctively from the gestures he has developed over the past 15 years. The paintings follow a consistent format shaped by his ongoing process. Through his daily, almost ritual practice, he introduces new elements while keeping a clear continuity in his work.

Born in 1974, Joji Nakamura currently lives and works in Yokohama, Japan. Joji Nakamura paints with his hands using acrylic, gesso, graphite and ink on canvas. His extruded faces are instantly recognizable. Nakamura’s dynamic strokes transform into his own rendition of a classic portrait, a figure painting or a surreal landscape created with his body. He has held exhibitions in Paris, the Netherlands, Taiwan, Japan and the US. For the past few years, Nakamura added colors to the monotone repertoire paintings of his early years, presenting portraits in soft blotchy hues. Past recent shows include Kaplan Projects in Mallorca, Zieher Smith in Nashville, Galerie Mikiko Fabiani in Paris, Scooters For Peace in Tokyo and The Fridge in New York.

Joji Nakamura 
I remembered someone from that day and stood there. In the park [2025]
36 x 48 inches (91.44 x 121.92 cm)
Acylic on Canvas
(Oak wood frame)

$10000

 

Joji Nakamura 
Melting in the blue night [2025]
36 x 48 inches (91.44 x 121.92 cm)
Acylic on Canvas
(Oak wood frame)

$10000

 

Joji Nakamura 
Sometimes bubblegum dreams [2025]
36 x 48 inches (91.44 x 121.92 cm)
Acylic on Canvas
(Oak wood frame)

$10000

 

 

 

 

Joji Nakamura 
I’m ready for the blue [2025]
36 x 48 inches (91.44 x 121.92 cm)
Acylic on Canvas
(Oak wood frame)

$10000

 

 

Joji Nakamura
It smelled of peppermint [2024]
40 x 60 inches (101.6cm x 152.4cm) 
Acrylic on canvas
(Oak wood frame)

$12500

Joji Nakamura
You who rises to the surface [2024]
40 x 60 inches (101.6cm x 152.4cm) 
Acrylic on canvas
(Oak wood frame)

$12500
 

Joji Nakamura
Original landscape (Avocado mountain) [2024]
36 x 48 inches (91.44cm x121.92cm)
Acrylic on canvas
(Oak wood frame)

$10000

 

 

Joji Nakamura
A black and white world with a bit of color [2024]
60 x 40 inches (152.4cm x 101.6cm) 
Acrylic on canvas
(Oak wood frame)

$12500

 

Joji Nakamura
Untitled 1 [2025]
15 x 30 inches
Acrylic on canvas
(Oak wood frame)

$3600

 

Joji Nakamura
Untitled 2 [2025]
15 x 30 inches
Acrylic on canvas
(Oak wood frame)

$3600

 

KAZUMA KOIKE

Born in 1980 and lives in Osaka, Japan. 
Koike spent his childhood in Buenos Aires, Argentina, attended high school in Barcelona, Spain, and graduated from the Department of Sculpture, College of Art at Nihon University in Tokyo. The works of Spanish sculptor Josép Clarà has inspired him to follow suit. Growing up in a multi-cultural environment, Koike is interested in “Shinbutsu-Shugo”, a mix between Japan's native Shinto beliefs and Chinese Buddhism. Koike visited numerous temples where their architecture, gardens, and sculptures became his inspiration. 

Koike started his first attempt of deconstructionism sculpture by compiling various dismantled found objects, removing their physical meaning, and reforming them into a sculpture. In the recent decade, Koike created most artworks by mixing images from different space and time, creating “fictional ancient artifacts” as if they do not belong to any era of the recorded history. Motifs of divinity, big cats, plants and pineapples repeatedly appears in Koike’s works, such as the tiger paintings of Japan's Edo period — there was no tiger in Japan at that time. Tiger paintings then were imaginary creatures made with reference to chinese paintings, furs brought back and cats. Koike always aims at the state where “different elements coexist in harmony”. He once joked that future scholars from 2000 years later will discover a whole new culture from his buried works.

The artist attempts to present his works as if they were found objects, hence his creations are mostly spontaneous. Black clay and special black glaze are applied to simulate the color of traditional Japanese tea sets. Most of Koike’s sculptures are titled in codes — “BC” stands for “Black Clay”, and numbers are the date finished modeling - Koike avoids any narrative in the work titles, so that one could interpret his work from a more detached perspective purely on the basis of its physical form.

Koike's notable recent shows include Cadet Capela (Paris, 2023), OMURO MUSEUM (Mie, 2021), two-person Shows at Aishonanzuka Gallery with Jordy Kerwick (Hong Kong, 2024), and with Djordje Ozbolt (Hong Kong, 2023), as well as HAGD Contemporary with Henrik Godsk (Aalborg, 2023)

 

 

 

Born in 1978, Ayako Sakuragi studied French literature at Sophia University in Tokyo, then fashion design at Studio Berçot in Paris. After working for eleven years at Comme des Garçons, she returned to artistic studies. She received her Master’s degree from Tokyo University of the Arts in 2021 and graduated from the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris (DNSAP) in 2022.  

She was a finalist for The Dior Photography and Visual Arts Award for Young Talents in 2024, as well as for the Sisley Prize of the Beaux-Arts de Paris in 2025. Her work 108 Days is part of the collection of the ARTER Museum (Istanbul). She is currently pursuing a Doctorat de création at the École Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie in Arles. She is also an artist in residence at La Capsule – Résidence Création Photo in Le Bourget, and continues her practice and experiments between Paris and Arles.  

For her, the camera is a device of non-human perception: devoid of consciousness and intention, it arbitrarily cuts out a fragment of space-time. This gesture can make us see the world differently. It is not about representation, but about revelation. What interests her is neither form nor content, but the subtle relationship between existence, invisibility and perception. Her work explores the boundaries of the image and highlights the importance of invisible elements: time and memory.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All Unique Works from Hundred and eight days Series
Signed and dated.
Handmade C-print with enlarger.
Glossy paper 11x14 inches
Shadow box frame included 12x15 inches
2000 USD / pc

Hundred and eight days
SERIES
[ text excerpt translated from “Memories of a voyage without images.” Didier Semin, Travioles second edition ]

The so-called avant-gardist, those of the beginning of the 20th century were very concerned with the infinitesimal and the imponderable. Marcel Duchamp wondered about the potential thickness of a cast shadow, Émile Malespine dreamed of weighing writings and kisses while Francis Picabia doubted which was heavier, day or night. It is wrong to consider those questions extravagant.
One who heard one day in the mountains the echo of his own voice wondered for the first time what the speed of sound is, such as modern artists do. But there is nothing infinitesimal and imponderable aside from our own perception. "All our systems of knowledge, all our science and all our philosophy, and most of all, all our certainties, doubts, eternal truths and ignorances are closely adjusted to this average altitude of five feet and seven inches, to which we carry our own head above the surface of the ground”: it is from this very simple observation that Jean Epstein developed his beautiful theory "The Intelligence of a Machine.
The microscope, the telescope, the camera, the tape recorder each in their own way think differently than we do about dimensions, time or the lack of it, and give us a different perspective otherwise inaccessible in the limited spectrum of our own senses. In Jean Epstein's time, the extension of our perception was done with analog tools: what was beyond our reach left a concrete mark through a lens on a chemical emulsion, through a membrane, a furrow on wax or onto a magnetic band. For about thirty years, sounds and images have been digital, the progress induced is immense but we can agree that it is part of knowledge not of sensory perception.

Music lovers consider above all the sound of vinyl records read by a needle and movie enthusiasts the 35mm films. The images of James Webb space telescope fascinate because we believe they are photographs which they are not: they are data re-arranged in images, the colors are arbitrary, the result of a convention between astronomers.
A data spreadsheet of numbers however skilfully manipulated will never make us feel like the scar left by light on a photosensitive plate and it is because she is an artist that Ayako Sakuragi invented small, primitive machines to explore the unnoticed interstices of our daily lives, those which we never observe: cardboard envelopes filled with photographic film, carefully sealed but pierced in their center with a tiny hole that photographers call sténopé (pinhole photography).
They are not propelled into intergalactic space but delivered to the less surprising vagaries of the postal services, thanks to which they travel from one continent to another.
To the question “what does it feel like to be a letter?", Ayako Sakuragi's envelopes give an answer in real images, captured from the sorting table: those of the films carefully developed which contain the luckiest ones returning to the sender. We are facing travel memories devoid of clichés but here and there we clearly recognize something, an object that has traveled around the world without anyone even noticing it. "The immaterial pictorial sensibility" would have said Yves Klein who, one day, when he was traveling from Paris to Nice, fixed on the roof of his car a canvas coated with pigments, for the sole and only purpose of taking the imprint of the wind and the rain...

 

For All info contact:
juliendavid@gmail.com
646 785 59 45

 

THE FRIDGE
11 East 78th Street
Fourth Floor
New York, NY