The Bruce Museum has a new exhibition, “Kenji Nakahashi: Strange Beauty,” celebrating the boundary pushing work of the late Japanese artist.
The exhibition will be on view from February 6-May 4, 2025, in the Vicki Netter Fitzgerald Gallery.
Kenji Nakahashi (Japanese, 1947–2017) A Cut-Out Sky (Thames Street between Broadway and Trinity Place, New York City), 1979 (printed 1984) Chromogenic print, 11 x 14 in. Bruce Museum, Anonymous gift in memory of Kenji Nakahashi, 2022.01.48 © Center for Creative Photography, Arizona Board of Regents
Celebrating a recent gift to the Bruce Museum’s collection, this exhibition highlights the artist’s remarkable creative vision. Best known for his conceptual and street photography, Kenji Nakahashi (Japanese, 1947–2017) produced a highly experimental body of work grounded in the everyday. Playful and intellectually rigorous, his photographs feature images of ordinary life, from subway encounters and skyscrapers silhouetted against the sky to mundane objects such as eggs, pencils, and analog clocks. Yet Nakahashi often placed his subjects in unexpected, even surreal contexts, inviting viewers to rethink the relationship between the ordinary and the extraordinary. Seen through the eyes of this gifted artist, the more than thirty photographs on display transport the viewer into the strange beauty of Nakahashi’s world.
“We are thrilled to highlight a recent gift of 90 works by Kenji Nakahashi to the Bruce Museum’s collection,” said Margarita Karasoulas, Curator of Art. “Nakahashi radically redefined the photography of his time, transforming ordinary subjects into Surrealist compositions characterized by his trademark humor and idiosyncratic approach to geometric abstraction. Other photographs in the exhibition lend a uniquely personal dimension, documenting his experiences as a Japanese artist living and working in the United States.”
Born in Ibigawa, Japan, Nakahashi moved to New York City in 1973, where he lived and worked until his death. Largely self-taught, he trained as a graphic designer before continuing his formal studies at the Pratt Institute and Art Students League. The manufactured environment and cultural diversity of this urban metropolis inspired Nakahashi, who flattened and fragmented the city and its inhabitants into geometric and kaleidoscopic forms. Other photographs evoke the uncanny, depicting familiar objects—including bicycles, street signs, and mannequins—in unfamiliar ways.
The formal and conceptual ironies that play out across Nakahashi’s photographic works elevate the mundane into the extraordinary. Employing visual and textual puns and unusual juxtapositions, his enigmatic images encourage viewers to contemplate the strange and surprisingly beautiful aspects of everyday life anew.
“Kenji Nakahashi: Strange Beauty” is organized by the Bruce Museum and curated by Margarita Karasoulas, Curator of Art, with Jordan Hillman, Curatorial Associate. Support for “Kenji Nakahashi: Strange Beauty” is generously provided by NovoSculpt, the Charles M. and Deborah G. Royce Exhibition Fund, CT Department of Economic and Community Development, and CT Humanities.