■“The Pre-Painterly”

NAOHIKNO KURIYAKI, responding to the declaration that “painting is dead,” proposes that artistic practice can move not only toward post-painting forms—such as installation, performance art, and digital expression—but also toward a progression into the pre-painterly.

He applies materials that emerged in the modern and contemporary era—such as colored pencils, crayons, and marker pens—as elements of the pre-painterly. Furthermore, he practices methods such as drawing without live models, reverse perspective, and the introduction of script-like mark-making, regarding them as forms of pre-painterliness that were once universal before the Renaissance, as seen in icons, yamato-e painting, and cave wall paintings.