Nature Paints, Technology Mediates — Naoko Tosa Asks What “Generative Japanese Painting” Might Be, at Kyoto City KYOCERA Museum of Art

From An Expression, held in the collection of MoMA, to the premiere of the new work Tosa Rinpa: Spirit Resonance, Vital Movement — a survey of some forty years of practice in which sound, air, vibration, gravity and fluids give rise to the image

Naoko Tosa Exhibition Executive Committee

From Saturday 7 November to Sunday 22 November 2026, “Naoko Tosa: Contemporary Artist” will be held in the Hall of Light, 1F, Main Building, Kyoto City KYOCERA Museum of Art.

■ Letting natural forces generate the image, without the brush — a survey of nearly forty years of practice

Contemporary artist Naoko Tosa will hold a solo exhibition in the Hall of Light at Kyoto City KYOCERA Museum of Art from 7 to 22 November 2026.

Spanning some four decades of work, the exhibition traces her trajectory from An Expression — produced in 1985 and acquired by the Museum of Modern Art, New York (MoMA) in 2011 — through to Tosa Rinpa: Spirit Resonance, Vital Movement, a new work premiering here.

Today, discussion of “generation” tends to revolve around generative AI. Tosa, however, has pursued a more fundamental question since the 1980s, moving across emotion, the body, sound, natural phenomena, artificial life and cultural computing: how does an image come into being?

In her work, the artist does not depict nature. She sets invisible forces in motion — sound, air, vibration, gravity, fluids — and lets natural phenomena themselves generate the image. High-speed cameras then make visible the instant that the human eye cannot catch.

Here the camera is no longer a device for recording, but an instrument of making that stands in place of the brush. The exhibition reconsiders the boundaries between painting, the moving image and technology by asking: can Japanese painting exist without the brush?

Asymmetry, empty space, transience, spirit resonance and vital movement — the aesthetic sensibilities embedded in Japanese culture are not quoted by Tosa as style. She has reinterpreted them as principles of generation, as the very means by which an image is produced. From her video art of the 1980s, through Sound of Ikebana, made with sound and fluids, and Genesis and UTSUROI, which work with natural phenomena, to the new Tosa Rinpa: Spirit Resonance, Vital Movement, which binds generative form to a ground of gold — this development reveals the conditions and systems for the birth of form that Tosa has long pursued.

On view are major works including An Expression from the MoMA collection, the early ECSTASY, and Sound of Ikebana, Genesis and UTSUROI. Connecting the generative knowledge accumulated within Japanese culture to contemporary technology, the exhibition asks how media art might renew Japanese painting.

■ Sound, the body, fluids, gravity, chance — an inquiry into the conditions under which form is born

Tosa’s interest has never been directed at the finished image. What she has worked with is the movement of forces prior to the emergence of form: sound, the body, fluids, gravity, chance. A work, for her, is not a completed object but a set of conditions under which a phenomenon can occur — a site for experiencing the moment in which the world generates itself.

Since taking part in “NEW VIDEO JAPAN”, organised by MoMA curator Barbara London in 1986, Tosa has developed a representational practice of generation across video art, interactive art, artificial life and cultural computing.

Structured around the themes of the four seasons, the body, sound, flowers, water and the cosmos, the exhibition presents the theory of generation underlying Japanese culture from the perspective of contemporary art.

■ Exhibition details

[Title] Naoko Tosa: Contemporary Artist

[Dates] Saturday 7 November – Sunday 22 November 2026

[Hours] 10:00–18:00

[Closed] Mondays

[Venue] Hall of Light, 1F, Main Building, Kyoto City KYOCERA Museum of Art

[Admission] Free

[Organiser] Naoko Tosa Exhibition Executive Committee

[Sponsors] Mimaki Engineering Co., Ltd.; Gloval Stage Co., Ltd. https://gloval-stage.com/

[Supported by] Kyoto Prefecture; City of Kyoto; Tosa Laboratory, Disaster Prevention Research Institute, Kyoto University