More information about Rei Nakanishi is available on the artist’s website.
Rei Nakanishi’s Art, Where Graphic Design Meets Painting
Having created digital works since childhood, this artist now blends them with painting, captivated by its unpredictability.
‘landscape – in the style of Gauguin #1’, 2024, oil, canvas, acrylic, spray paint, resin, UV print on canvas – 220 × 582 cm. A monumental homage to Gauguin’s ‘Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?’, this piece was exhibited in 2024 at Ginza Tsutaya Books. The human life cycle is depicted from right to left across the canvas.
It was on the family computer, using Microsoft Paint, that Rei Nakanishi first discovered the joy of creating. As a child, he would spend hours painstakingly drawing with the mouse and browsing the internet, captivated by both. He soon moved on to Adobe Illustrator and eventually enrolled in a high school specialising in the arts.
While many children today gravitate towards video editing on their smartphones, Rei Nakanishi belongs to a generation shaped by image editing software. That early experience continues to influence his practice today, with much of his work taking the form of two-dimensional pieces. His process begins on Photoshop, where he composes his works digitally before printing them using UV technology. He then adds layer upon layer of paint by hand, blending the digital and the analog in a meticulous back-and-forth.
‘I want to create paintings that truly belong to our time,’ he explains. ‘Although I studied graphic design in high school, I’ve always had deep respect for the great figures in the history of painting—especially those who worked in the era when photography emerged and forced painters to question their role. Today, when drawing with a computer has become second nature, it feels only natural for me to explore the space between graphic design and art.’
It’s this perspective that has led Rei Nakanishi to weave direct references to Van Gogh and Gauguin into his work. He embraces both the happy accidents of painting—unexpected colour blends, the texture of brushstrokes—and the infinite flexibility of the digital realm, where compositions can be endlessly reworked. In navigating between these two modes of creation, he continues to explore a form of pictorial expression unique to the present.
Rei Nakanishi
Born in 1994 in Mie Prefecture. In 2016, he moved to the United States, where he worked as an assistant to artist Meguru Yamaguchi. After returning to Japan in 2019, he joined the collective GOLD WOOD ART WORKS. He now lives and works in Shizuoka Prefecture.
Rei Nakanishi
Left: ‘flower of life no.151’, 2025. Right: ‘flower of life no.152’, 2025. Oil, wood panel, acrylic, resin, UV print – Ø 145.5 cm. These works depict flowers measuring roughly one metre in diameter. Long a central motif in the history of painting, flowers continue to be a recurring source of inspiration for Rei Nakanishi.
Two of Nakanishi’s works were featured as sake labels for the bottles ‘Life’ and ‘Death’. On the left, a flower represents the fresh brew (‘Life’), while on the right, a skull was used for the aged sake (‘Death’).
By layering brushwork over the UV-printed base, Rei Nakanishi creates a distinctive texture with uneven relief, one of the hallmarks of his practice.
Right: ‘flower of life – in the style of van Gogh #7’, 2024. Oil, wood panel, acrylic, resin, UV print – 145.5 × 145.5 cm. On the right, a tribute to Van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers’. On the left, a work in progress from the ‘flower of life’ series.
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