Natsuyuki Nakanishi spent more than fifty years wrestling with a deceptively simple question: what is painting? His answer—"Painting is the study of the glaringly bright"—guided an artistic practice that rejected representation in favor of something far more radical. Drawing on distinctions between resemblance and similitude articulated by Magritte and theorized by Foucault, Nakanishi positioned himself in the space between "the world" and "the picture," neither copying one onto canvas nor projecting outward.
