NEW SUMMER EXHIBITIONS
NAKAMURA TOMONORI & WATANABE CHIAKI
June 27 – July 19, 2025
Artists’ Opening: Friday, June 27 from 5-7pm
Demonstration by Watanabe Chiaki & Lecture by Nakamura Tomonori: Saturday, June 28 at 2pm
We are delighted to open our 2025 season with a two-person show featuring the work of Nakamura Tomonori and Watanabe Chiaki. Both men attended the SADO School of Bamboo Art on Sado Island in the Niigata Prefecture in Japan in 2010, where they were taught by noted TAI Modern artist, Honma Hideaki. Drawn together by their explorations of transparency and linearity, both Nakamura and Watanabe are proudly carrying on the Sado Island bamboo tradition.
Nakamura Tomonori was a former IT engineer before he chose to pursue an artistic career. Enrolling at the SADO School in 2010, he studied under Honma Hideaki. While he was a student, he showed his work locally and regionally and won seven awards before he had even graduated. After graduating, Nakamura began to show on a national scale and was accepted into the prestigious 45th Nitten (Japan Fine Arts Exhibition).
Ever the engineer, he would often use paper maquettes to plan the composition of a piece before even touching any bamboo. However, he has recently moved toward an improvisational conversation between the artist and material, creating his new series with only a general sense of premeditated scale and movement. Nakamura continues his explorations of geometric balance, taking his forms to new heights in this body of work. He says, “Compared to when I first started bamboo craft, I now focus on enjoying the creation process and feeling that sense of excitement.”
Watanabe Chiaki worked as a social worker for fourteen years before quitting his job and setting out to Sado Island. There, he studied under both Honma Hideaki and Kawano Shoko. Like his teachers, he finds inspiration in the natural world and extrapolates on that with his idiosyncratic lightness and precise angles. Most recently, Watanabe was the recipient of the award for Excellence in Sculpture Prize from The Next Generation Bamboo Art Prizes in 2024. He says, “The various forms of lines that I use as the source of my inspiration include wormholes that connected to various places that may exist in the universe, magnetic lines that represent magnetic fields, spirals, intersecting lines, lines that are made up of a series of spheres or circles, and lines that curl up into a ball.”
We warmly invite you to join the artists in the gallery at 1601 Paseo de Peralta for the opening on Friday, June 27 from 5-7pm, and then on Saturday, June 28 at 2pm for a bamboo demonstration given by Watanabe, accompanied with a lecture on the artform by Nakamura, beginning at 2pm. We hope you will be able to join the artists at this opening event!
To learn more and view our online catalog, click here.
New Early Summer Works
June 2025
During this early summer season, we are pleased to showcase new works by Living National Treasure Fujitsuka Shosei, Uematsu Chikuyu, and Kojiro Yoshiaki.
Fujitsuka’s Rising Dragon shows an expressiveness of form and mastery of dramatic composition that the artist i has become renowned for in his dynamic career. While also widely known for his signature color-shifting bamboo technique, explorations at the intersection of design and fine art, astronomy and myth, continue to captivate collectors of his work.
Uematsu Chikuyu has devoted his life to pursuing perfection in bamboo art. Living a near hermetic life in Kanagawa Prefecture, Uematsu restricts his production to around one piece a year. His body of work encompasses an astonishing diversity of forms, unified by the artist’s superior technique and attention to detail.
Kojiro Yoshiaki began his career as an architect at Tokyo University of Science. In his thirties, after experimenting with foamed glass as an architectural material, he decided to make a career change and became a glass artist. His scientific, regimented approach has led him to create work that captures the textural movement of glass, seemingly frozen in time.
We look forward to welcoming you soon!
MORE UPCOMING SUMMER EXHIBITIONS
SASAI FUMIE
July 25 – August 23, 2025
Artist’s reception: Friday,, July 25 from 5-7pm
Artist talk: Saturday, July 26 from 2pm
Sasai Fumie works with the traditional process of urushi lacquer, incorporating a modern sensibility into her quirky forms. We invite you to celebrate her first solo exhibition in the United States.
SUEMURA SHOBUN
August 29 – October 4, 2025
Opening reception: Friday, August 29 from 5-7pm
We conclude our summer season with a retrospective on the work of Suemura Shobun (1917-2000). A true son of Osaka, he incorporated black bamboo from Kyushu in his distinct seashell forms during his impressive career.
About the Gallery
TAI Gallery was created by Robert T. Coffland, a leading expert in Japanese bamboo arts in the West, who began sourcing works from contemporary masters in Japan. The gallery moved from the founder’s home to a gallery space on Canyon Road, then to its current location in the Santa Fe Railyard in 2006.
Margo Thoma purchased the gallery in 2014 and merged it with her contemporary American art gallery, Eight Modern. Rebranded as TAI Modern, Thoma and renowned bamboo expert, Koichiro Okada, continue Coffland’s mission of building museum-quality collections.
Thoma supports and promotes bamboo art in the West by serving as an advisor to Western collectors and institutions, facilitating public demonstrations, and curating bamboo art exhibitions. She is a tireless collaborator and ally with and for senior artists across Japan, and sponsors aspiring bamboo artists to participate in national competitions. She has written essays for exhibition catalogs both in the U.S. and Japan and is a frequent public speaker on bamboo art.
Works by TAI Modern artists have been placed in some of the country’s most prestigious institutions, including the Art Institute of Chicago; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Mint Museum of North Carolina; Minneapolis Institute of Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Denver Art Museum; Museum of Art and Design; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco.