Nobu Fukui

I came to New York from Japan in March 1963 after a few months stay in Chicago. I found a lodging in an apartment on West 88th Street off Broadway, where an elderly Japanese man had a lease. It was a so-called railroad shack, and I rented a middle room. I sat on the bed and placed a canvas on the windowsill and made my first few paintings in America. Those, my earliest paintings in New York, were kind of the extension of what I was doing in Tokyo, but with limited material: one small brush and five tubes of cheap oil paint. From there, over a half century of my journey as an artist in New York began....

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NEW YORK, NY.- Stephen Haller Gallery presents an exhibition of dynamic new work by Nobu Fukui, collage paintings vibrant with invention Fukui’s work reads as non-objective painting at a distance, yet on closer observation intrigues with surprising imagery that suggests narrative. The eye plays across the surface of his work as if watching a video game in giddy visual delight. Paint, collage, three-dimensional beads: these are some of the ingredients of this exciting work. Benjamin Genocchio in the New York Times wrote: “In fact, some works are so densely layered that they are a bit like bubbling cauldrons of imagery. It is part Pop Art, part potpourri…” Read Full Story

NEW YORK, NY.- Stephen Haller Gallery presents a solo exhibition of dynamic new work by Nobu Fukui - canvases vibrant with invention. The exhibition is accompanied by a full color catalogue with essay by Carter Ratcliff. Fukui’s work reads as non-objective painting at a distance, yet on closer observation beguiles with surprising imagery that suggests narrative. The eye plays across the surface of his work as if watching a video game in giddy visual delight. Oil paint, acrylics, three-dimensional beads, collage: these are some of the ingredients of this exciting work...Read Full Story

If you can overlook the limitations of the Molloy College Art Gallery, a hallway in an administrative building where paintings are occasionally hung, there is a terrific selection of works in “Words Become Pictures.” It is a group show looking at the use of words in contemporary art, especially painting, sometimes to enhance the viewer’s understanding and sometimes as purely abstract visual symbols...Read Full Story

The orderly grids that serve as the basis for Nobu Fukui's dense but rhythmic paintings are animated and almost obliterated by layers of newspaper clippings, patches of carnival color, swatches of fabric, beads and other embellishments. Their lively surfaces sometimes suggest game boards and at other times the heavily stylized nature symbolism of Japanese screens....Read Full Story