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WE WILL SURVIVE: A NEW YORK-BASED PAINTER USES SYMBOLISM AND STRANGE IMAGERY TO CONVEY A POTENT MESSAGE

IN NEW WORKS NOW ON VIEW AT KAPOW GALLERY, NAOTO NAKAGAWA EXPANDS THE HUMANISTIC THEMES OF HIS MOST RECENT PAINTING SERIES


Published on February 2, 2026


“Naoto Nakagawa 2026”
Kapow Gallery
23 Monroe Street
New York NY 10002 USA
January 23 – February 22, 2026


by Edward M. Gómez


NEW YORK — If, as the old adage proposes, every life is a journey or, at its most unpredictable, an adventure, then true artists’ lives represent a kind of travel that can take them to the farthest reaches of the imagination and the most restless regions of the soul.

The artist Naoto Nakagawa in his studio in New York in July 2019 with several of the paintings in his “Mona Lisa Series.” Photo by Edward M. Gómez

For more than a decade now, the Japanese-born, New York-based artist Naoto Nakagawa has been packing into his paintings an endless smorgasbord of references to intellectual and cultural history, from scientists’ understanding of cosmology and the national flowers of every country in the world to the invention of the atomic bomb, William Blake’s “The Ancient of Days,” James Montgomery Flagg’s famous U.S. Army recruiting poster, swarms of migrating monarch butterflies, the pop singer Madonna in her Jean Paul Gaultier-designed cone bra, and more.

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