Submitted by Salon Refu
You’ve seen Jean Nagai’s work around town. He makes murals. There’s one on the front of the Northern, another on the side of the Salon Refu, across the street from Trinacria, Fosbre, and Browsers Books. The two murals don’t look alike. The Northern’s features multiple splashes of loose paint; at Salon Refu, a taller building, the mural consists of huge geometric shapes resembling tipis and diamonds.
Unlike grafitti, mural works on buildings made with the permission of building owners are legal and more or less permanent. For example, the Hiroshige “Great Wave” on the west wall of Childhood’s End Gallery was painted in 1978, before Jean Nagai was born.
Besides very large outdoor works, Nagai makes super-finicky smaller works on paper, superimposing white dots applied with correction-fluid pen onto flat colored backgrounds. His pen allows him to exercise exacting control over the dots’ distribution. The dots add up in various ways: sometimes illustrative – flowers, animals – and sometimes pure pattern, either geometric or evocative of natural forms.
Nagai will be showing a series of these works at Salon Refu, 114 N Capitol, from December 5 through January 4, 2015. There will be tote bags for sale a bit later in the month, as well as original works and color prints of them in smaller sizes. In addition, Nagai and gallery owner Susan Christian will demonstrate batiking technique onsite, using molten wax on silk and cotton to produce dot-patterned equivalents of Nagai’s designs. If you’re good, we may allow you to help.
