Banquet of Life: Nihonga Paintings by Daisuke Nakano

NEW YORK, NY – Ippodo Gallery is pleased to announce Banquet of Life: Nihonga Paintings by Daisuke Nakano, the Japanese painter’s long-awaited third New York solo exhibition, coinciding with Asia Week New York 2026. Eleven new works, on view from March 19 to April 18, 2026, mark the pivotal transition of seasons. Daisuke Nakano celebrates the natural world through glorious depictions of flora and fauna: blanketed in shimmering snow, at the turning point of the springtime thaw, and in full blooming colors. 

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.