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Nava Gidanian-Kagan

Love Series

Exhibition of Works Created During Artist in Residence KOBE (AiRK)

Rose Garden Kitano is pleased to present Love Series, the first exhibition in Japan by artist Nava Gidanian-Kagan, featuring a new body of work developed during her residency in Kobe.

Nava is a U.S.-based artist whose family roots trace back to both Iran and Israel.

As part of the Artist in Residence KOBE (AiRK) program, which welcomes artists from around the world, Gidanian-Kagan spent two months in Kobe researching Japanese visual culture. Visiting museums, bookstores, and archives throughout the city, she focused particularly on ukiyo-e prints and traditional Japanese pictorial aesthetics, drawing from these encounters to create an entirely new series of paintings.

Known for her large-scale figurative oil paintings on canvas, Gidanian-Kagan has, for this project, expanded her practice through experimentation with acrylic paint on translucent Yupo paper. This shift in medium has enabled a new visual language characterized by delicacy, permeability, and fluidity.

On Love and Dissolving Boundaries

At the core of Love Series is an exploration of intimacy and human connection.

Inspired by scenes of love from Asian cinema that have remained vivid in the artist’s memory, the works reflect the influence of ukiyo-e and Japanese painting traditions, particularly their use of negative space, subtle psychological distance, and nuanced relationships between figures. The refined color sensibility and linear elegance associated with Japanese printmaking also resonate throughout the series.

Gidanian-Kagan describes her work as a search for “a particular melting point where the boundary between two people dissolves.” On the translucent surface of Yupo paper, figures emerge through soft, understated lines, their contours gently blurred as if their identities and bodies were merging into one another.

Rather than depicting narrative events, these paintings dwell within fleeting moments of closeness: a touch, an embrace, the instant when physical and emotional distance collapses. Through a visual language that is both restrained and sensuous, the artist captures intimacy as something fluid, fragile, and profoundly alive.

<Exhibition Information>

Title: Love Series

Artist: Nava Gidanian-Kagan

Venue: Rose Garden 103

2-8-15 Yamamoto-dori, Chuo-ku, Kobe, Japan

Dates: June 27–28, 2026

Hours: 11:00–18:00

Admission: Free

<Opening Reception> (Interpretation Available)

An opening reception with the artist will be held on June 27. Visitors will have the opportunity to hear directly from Gidanian-Kagan about the conceptual background and creative process behind the works on view.

Date & Time: June 27, 2026, 16:00–18:00

Venue: Rose Garden 103

2-8-15 Yamamoto-dori, Chuo-ku, Kobe, Japan

Program: Artist talk, refreshments and drinks provided

Admission: Free

Artist in Residence KOBE（AiRK）