NAOKI KIMURA Solo Exhibition
“Nagi-Rei Lullscapes – Before It Begins ∶
Zero-Horizon Photographic Art”
June 12 – July 4, 2026
12:00 – 18:00
/ Closed on Sundays, Mondays and Public Holidays
Sho+1 is pleased to present “Nagi-Rei Lullscapes – Before It Begins ∶ Zero-Horizon Photographic Art” the second solo exhibition by NAOKI KIMURA on view from June 12 (Fri) to July 4 (Sat), 2026.
An opening reception will be held on the evening of Thursday, June 11, and an artist talk is also scheduled during the exhibition period.
“Something has already begun before the image becomes visible.”
What emerges if the image itself never fully begins?
In this exhibition “Nagi-Rei”, Naoki Kimura quietly dismantles the very premise of photography itself. Rather than denying the image, Kimura traces back to the moment just before its formation, attempting to reveal the very conditions of “seeing” itself—prior to subject, composition, or meaning.
The stillness evoked in “Nagi-Rei” is not mere silence. It is a sustained tension without declaration, suggesting a condition that continues unresolved while refusing assertion.
Through many years of producing monochrome works, Kimura has continued to explore modes of perception and spatial conditions prior to the fixation of the image. “Zero-Horizon (零式)” is a structural perspective on vision that has gradually taken shape through this long-term practice.
The exhibition is composed of four sections:
Fragments / Resonances / Interference / Remains
・Fragments — That which appears as faint, fragmentary indications before cohering into an image
・Resonances — That which quietly sustains relational continuity
・Interference — That in which structure destabilizes and coherence begins to collapse
・ Remains — That which persists even after something has withdrawn, gradually bearing the trace (“Return to Zero”)
At the core of this exhibition is the perspective that Kimura conceives as “Zero-Horizon.” It is not a theory to be interpreted, but rather a point at which the image has yet to assert itself—a horizon that exists prior to emergence.
Rather than depicting subjects, the works allow fragments of light, surface, and space to appear while never fully settling into a singular image. Structured through shifts in emergence, interference, and rupture, they place the viewer within a field of unstable perception.
Rooted in a practice developed primarily in Italy, Kimura’s monochromatic works reduce photographic expression to its barest threshold. Light hesitates rather than illuminates; form drifts rather than settles; the image resists completion.
The works neither capture, narrate, nor conclude.
They simply remain.
Rather than asking, “What do we see?”, the exhibition asks how seeing itself may fail to fully take form. This exhibition invites the viewer into the quietly indeterminate field of perception.
We look forward to your visit to the gallery.
Artist Statement
A series of monochrome photographs arranged in a space of quietude. While capturing fleeting moments, they convey an impression of incompletion. The new exhibition “Nagi-Rei Lullscapes – Before It Begins ∶ Zero-Horizon Photographic Art” is an attempt to reexamine the intrinsic possibilities of the photographic medium.
Photography has long been treated as a means of fixing the world as image. Moments are extracted, framed, solidified. Meaning accumulates around what has already been identified.
Yet before recognition solidifies, other conditions already exist—not external to the photograph, but within its very structure.
Over many years, I have sustained a practice of monochrome photography through the unstable relations of light, distance, atmosphere, urban space, and the tensions between presence and disappearance. The works assembled in this exhibition do not pursue spectacle or narrative resolution, but remain at the threshold where image, perception, and spatial relations have not yet fully stabilized.
What would later come to be called the “Zero-Horizon (零式)” structure is not a negation of photography. Rather, it is an attempt to reexamine the conditions under which photographic being emerges.
Here, photography is treated not as mere representation, but as a “structure of relations.” Light does not simply exist to illuminate subjects. Space does not merely function as backdrop. What appears as image continues to oscillate between generation and suspension.
The exhibition is composed of multiple sections—Fragments, Resonances, Interference, and Remains. These are not thematic categories, but distinct conditions through which continuity, instability, residue, and perceptual tension become visible within the photographic field.
“Nagi-Rei” does not aim at transcendence or symbolic interpretation. It asks whether photography can still touch upon that state before image, atmosphere, relation, and perception are subsumed into fixed interpretation.
Within this unstable state, the photograph is not yet complete. Neither is perception.
Artist Profile
Naoki Kimura, who spent his early childhood in Nishijin, Kyoto, moved to the United States in 1987 to further pursue photography as a form of fine art.
Today, Kimura’s work centers on “Nagi” (Lullscapes), a sensibility that moves within the subtle intervals between light and shadow, time and space. Through monochrome photography, he explores presences and relationships that emerge before they fully settle into fixed form or recognition.
The distinctive capacity of monochrome imagery to abstract reality and quietly reveal the contours of existence has remained at the core of his practice throughout his career.
After relocating to the United States, Kimura developed his work internationally while based in New York. From the early 1990s onward, he produced and presented numerous works throughout Europe, particularly in Italy. His photographic works, shaped by the atmospheric depth of European cities and architectural spaces, evolved into a unique visual language in which architecture was approached not merely as structure, but as a site where time, memory, silence, and spatial presence accumulate. He has also produced collaborative series with architects.
Since around 2017, Kimura has been based in Tokyo, where his work has continued to deepen through an attentiveness to spatial presence and the quiet relations formed between light, shadow, time, and silence. Rather than emphasizing the subject itself, his recent works increasingly turn toward subtle states that exist prior to the stabilization of the image — quiet intervals, traces of perception, and forms of presence that have not yet fully settled into recognition.
In recent years, Kimura’s practice has further evolved through the development of “Zero-Horizon Photo Art Theory” and “Shado,” frameworks through which photography is approached not as the reproduction of an object, but as an encounter with the conditions from which perception and presence emerge.
Naoki Kimura
Instagram：＠cogito0ergo0sum
Website：https://www.naokikimura.com/home-j
Exhibition Overview
NAOKI KIMURA Solo Exhibition “Nagi-Rei Lullscapes – Before It Begins ∶ Zero-Horizon Photographic Art”
Date：June 12 (Fri) – July 4 (Sat), 2026
Time：12:00 – 18:00 / Closed on Sundays, Mondays and Public Holidays
Venue：Sho+1
※Opening Reception
June 11 (Thu) 6pm – 8pm
The artist will attend the reception.
