Represented
Teruko Nagai
b. 1955, Osaka
Lives and works in Kyoto
One ink drawing a day since 1997, on paper she makes in winter, in a series that will end when she does.
On 3 February 1997 Teruko Nagai made an ink drawing on a sheet of paper measuring 24 by 33 centimetres. She has made one every day since. The series has no title beyond its dates and no stated endpoint, though Nagai has been clear in interviews that it ends when she stops.
The rule is narrow. One sheet, one sitting, sumi ink, no correction, no discarding. What varies is everything else: the amount of water, the state of the brush, the temperature of the room, whether she is at home in Kyoto or travelling. Drawings made in the same week can look nothing alike. Over a decade, patterns emerge that she says she did not put there and cannot account for, long tidal runs of dark or light that she only notices when the sheets are laid out.
She makes the paper herself, kozo fibre beaten by hand, in a six-week stretch each winter when the water is cold enough to keep the fibres from souring. The winter’s production determines the following year’s drawings, so a bad batch is simply lived with. This is the part of the practice she considers most important and the part she is least interested in discussing.
Nagai showed almost nothing for the first fifteen years of the series. Since 2013 the drawings have been exhibited in blocks, never individually, usually a full year or a full season at a time. Her work is in the collections of the National Museum of Modern Art Kyoto, M+ in Hong Kong and the Art Institute of Chicago. She joined the gallery in 2018.
