nca | nichido contemporary art

Venue: nca | nichido contemporary art
Date: 9.12 (sat.) – 10.10 (sat.), 2026
Gallery hours: Tue. – Sat. 11:00 – 19:00 (Closed on Mon., Sun., and National Holidays)

Jose Dàvila | Kent Henricksen | Pin-Ling Huang | Tammy Nguyen | Bruno Peinado | Shinique Smith
Chuta Kimura | Kazu Wakita

nca | nichido contemporary art is pleased to present the group show Rewriting Tomorrow.
We must turn to history to better understand our present. True understanding of the past, of how historical events chronologically unfolded and evolved, inform our grasp of the issues we are facing today, pushing us to explore future perspectives. Furthermore, through the work of contemporary artists, their unique expressive language, different approach and thought process, we are offered the chance to make new discoveries, little things in everyday life, small events that exist as small parts of a much larger historical narrative. The exhibition investigates how lessons and notions from the past have been revisited through the lens of contemporary art and, more specifically, through the work of the artists on view. For some, this process takes place through the appropriation and recontextualization of elements from iconic artworks; for others it translates into a source of inspiration from traditional artistic practice leading to new visual possibilities. And, in some cases, it is about the reinterpretation and challenge of concepts and knowledge that have dominated the main narrative, moving from a purely artistic discourse to a more complex, analysis of our time. Each through their unique approach and practice, these artists show the legacy of the past while making room for dialogue.

Jose Dàvila creates sculptural installations, photographic works and paintings that simultaneously emulate, challenge, and pay homage to 20th century avant-garde art and architecture through the appropriation and recontextualization of elements from iconic artists throughout history By doing so, Dàvila reflects on the definition of conceptual art that states that it is the content and not the form what gives importance and meaning to a work of art. The work featured in this exhibition is a cut-out piece based on a work by Lichtenstein, an artist who has been extensively explored through the work on many contemporary artists, where the main sections are cut out, leaving only white silhouettes. Dàvila wants to create a twilight zone between a two-dimensional work and a three-dimensional work, between sculpture and representation where, challenging the medium itself, the paper (photos), he enables its becoming free to behave as a physical object, as a sculpture itself, rather than just a vehicle to carry an image.

Kent Henricksen’s embroidered paintings on silk draw imagery from diverse sources, such as Albrecht Durer’s woodcuts, Jose Guadalupe Posada’s engravings, and Max Ernst’s collages, to create a new suggestive narrative and pictorial complexity. Through intricately embroidered works, Henricksen explores issues of race and gender, power and conflict, juxtaposing illustrations of historical events with current contemporary images as he pulls viewers into a unique world where arbitrary narrative and mythic time are interwoven.
The work on view, Pig herder, consists of reprints of French Toile de Jouy fabrics, a traditional 18th-century fabric pattern traditionally featuring pastoral and mythological scenes, which he overlays with embroidery. Henricksen waves humorous – for instance, people replacing angels wearing odd clothes -while visually questioning the traditional roles of the oppressor and the oppressed across various cultures.

Pin-Ling Huang’s landscapes breathe life into new worlds that take shape directly from the many sketches and studies the artist records in her sketchbook. Creating a spatial structure that floats under the fluid brushstrokes and layers of thick paint, Huang’s imagery continues to unfold new visual possibilities following the viewer’s stance and perspective while walking the line between representation and abstraction.
The exhibition presents a selection of paintings that significantly draw on the artist’s personal experience of living in France. Bits of Huang’s own memories re-tracing the steps of cultural icons who deeply inspired her, places she visited, Auvers-sur-Oise for one, where Vincent van Gogh spent the last years of his life, everything lays layered on the canvas filtered by Huang’s own perspective.
By using earth-based pigments to create the paintings’ ground, and more classical oil painting traditional techniques, Huang brings back memories of the timeless scenery from that time moving back and forth between now and then through a gradual, layered application of gentle brushstrokes, creating something that seems to be charged with complex feelings and lingering nostalgia.

Tammy Nguyen explores the concept of truth through her own experiences, history, and philosophy, expressing it in her work using a variety of mediums, including painting, drawing, printmaking, and bookmaking. In the works on view Nguyen “retells” Plato's famous "Allegory of the Cave" while tapping into with her own personal experiences of moments when truth and beauty have felt ambiguous.
The paintings explore the meaning of seeing the "light"—in other words, the "truth." In Plato’s story, what initially appears only as shadows to the prisoners inside the cave, it reveals to be the truth when touched by the sunlight outside the cave. Nguyen’s paintings depict what happens the moment the sunlight touches the prisoner's skin. There, a transformation of some kind takes place and the prisoner's stone-hard body transmutes into a different matter, a quiet, metaphorical revelation of the truth of humanity and the true essence of things.

Through his artistic practice, Bruno Peinado has been exploring the relation between an artwork and its surroundings, while employing a wide range of materials, formats, and techniques. His deep interest in the questions of identity, memory, transmission, heritage and community dialogues with a personal insight on popular culture. The visual style, giving off a Western pop culture feel, skillfully weaving together different cultural aesthetics and elements with the diversity of ordinary things and symbols, intertwines with the traditions and symbols rooted in a multiethnic society. Peinado dismantles, destroys and reconstructs the rigidity and static nature of icons shaped by society. Through his practice, Peinado doesn't just reference literature, art history, cinema, pop music, advertising, and television; he repurposes their symbols to the point of reversing their very meaning.

Shinique Smith transforms clothing and collected everyday materials into abstract works that fuse the personal and the universal. There fragments of flashes of memory and emotion exist together, in parallel with the history, beauty, and possibilities that are bound within fabric and writing. Together they create a “cross-section of time, place and meaning”, offering multiple ramifications of their artistic potential. These reappropriated objects then become bearers of communal memory. They are filled with the artist’s own memory and that of people close to her, as well as of unknown figures or communities, memories and emotions from childhood, up to the diverse sense of belonging pertaining to each individual, all the while striking a deep chord within us, that spans from the personal to the social level.

Kimura Chuta (1917 – 1987) was one of the most representative Japanese artists of modern Western style painting, mainly focusing his career in Paris. Kimura’s work was strongly influenced by Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, and particularly by Pierre Bonnard's work. The production of landscape paintings Kimura has left behind represents the expression of a unique visual language, where the artist’s own emotions and feelings intertwine, while drawing inspiration from actual landscapes. And we find ourselves captivated by the houses, trees and streets drawn in thick lines, and the exquisite balance of vibrant colors and radiant light filling the canvas.

At age fifteen, Kazu Wakita (1908- 2005) moved to Berlin and later entered the Berlin National School of Fine Arts to study painting. His talent was recognized even back then, and he continued to work energetically since returning home. Despite experiencing various hardships - such as serving as a war artist, losing his studio to the war, and battling illness – Wakita’s passion never waned, juxtaposing the chaos of a shifting history with the quiet, small scenes of everyday life, birds, fish, and plants with a unique screen composition and warm, poetic colors. Wakita's works, focusing on the small worlds within our vast universe, are gentle yet overflowing with presence and vitality, as if bringing the existence of each and every one of us into sharp relief.