Kaori Someya: The Light Within

“In my work, the urahaku garments serve as an "Inner Light"—a radiance that illuminates both the interior strength of the subject and the space around her.”

NEW YORK, NY – Ippodo Gallery is pleased to present Kaori Someya: The Light Within , an exhibition of new works, from September 10 to October 17, 2026 . The show opens in attendance of the artist visiting from Tokyo on Thursday, September 10 from 5–8PM.

The exhibition features more than a dozen of her latest urahaku Nihonga paintings, created in part during her ongoing artist’s residency in Brooklyn. The centerpieces of the Manhattan gallery exhibition are two folding screens; inspired by the most celebrated masterworks of Japan’s Rimpa school, one closely recreates the scene of Tawaraya Sōtatsu's Wind God Fujin and Thunder God Raijin (c. 1639), while another references Ogata Kōrin's Kohaku Bai-zu (Red and White Plum Blossoms, c. 1714–16). Someya’s contemporary portrait scenes are illuminated using a thousand-year-old technique of diffusing reflective platinum, gold, and silver leaf decoration by backing them with translucent Mino washi paper.

Someya’s themes of impermanence, memory, transformation, and the eternal shifting dance of light are expressed as changing seasons and unfixed shadows. Vibrantly patterned kimono tell hidden stories of the characters. Kimono patterns derived from her late mother's handwork recur as depictions of "life backgrounds" — interior worlds made visible. Employing ijidōzuhō , the classical Japanese technique of rendering multiple moments within a single continuous scene, she imbues intense emotion—grief and renewal— into sweeping still images.

Her materials are ancient but the concerns are urgently contemporary. Nihonga today is more expansive than ever before: new pigments have emerged, and deviating from traditional motifs need no longer exclude a work from the category altogether. Someya classically prepares the Nihonga paints from rare azurite ( gunjō ) and malachite ( rokushō ) among many others precious and rare minerals, as well as enji and indigo dyes, and the shells of insects and oysters combined with Nikawa glue to achieve brilliantly layered and vivid colors. To her, the rare element of Nihonga is chowa no bi , the beauty in harmonizing disparate mediums, materials, and themes.

Someya's Brooklyn residency—her second extended working stay in New York—broadens the inspiration the artist draws from the city that she describes as a new way of seeing. Light Within is the fullest expression of that transformation to date.

Kaori Someya (b. 1977) is a Shimane-born Japanese painter based in Tokyo. She holds an M.A. in Cultural Properties and a B.A. in Japanese Nihonga painting from Tokyo University of the Arts, where she subsequently served as Adjunct Instructor, Research Assistant, and Assistant Professor. Her work has been recognized with multiple awards from the public exhibition INTEN at museums across Japan. Her paintings are held in the permanent collections of the Adachi Museum of Art, Imai Art Museum, and Niimi Museum of Art, Japan.