Pressure Variations #05

oil on canvas, wooden panel
h: 41, w: 32, d: 3.5 cm
2026

*Delivery will be after the current solo exhibition "Here and Now" (~May 23, 2026).
https://www.nomart.co.jp/exhibition/detail.php?exhCode=0225

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The generated pressure spreads through repetition, producing differences as it unfolds.
Subtle deviations form a rhythmic field of pressure across the surface.
A succession of differences.

Keiichi Ikegami

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[From the artist's comment at the solo exhibition "Here and Now" (April 18 - May 23, 2026 / Gallery Nomart)]

While sketching the Great Buddha in Nara, I felt a pressure from above, as if I were being pressed down, despite not being touched. It was a sensation that could only be described as being acupressured by the Buddha.


Through shiatsu, I have long engaged with the body through touch, and in the moments just before the passing of my parents and family members, I experienced the release of bodily tension. From this, I came to understand that a living body and its tension are inseparable. I have since sought to fix that sensation as a form of pressure arising between the black of charcoal and the white of the support.

Since my solo exhibition last year, I have become interested in Buddhist statues—human in form, yet seemingly devoid of such tension—and have been sketching various figures, including the Great Buddha of Nara.

Through these experiences, I realized that pressure is not only something applied by the fingers, but something already given by space and the universe itself. We are constantly living within the pressures of the universe—gravity, air, and atmospheric force.

In this exhibition, each fleeting moment of encountering that pressure—each “here and now”—is presented as the work itself. It is an event that emerges only in that place, where the pressure arising between the body and the universe manifests in the “here and now” of this space.