Experience the work of Nishiki Sugawara-Beda while listening to musician Damien Olsen Berdichevsky interpret the art on view through an improvised piano soundtrack.

In Adapt Adopt, her solo exhibition of Sumi ink paintings at Amos Eno Gallery, Nishiki Sugawara-Beda probes questions around “tradition.” Can we pinpoint the origin of any tradition? Are we confined by traditions, or do we govern and shape them with our own hands? This exhibition marks a turning point in Sugawara-Beda’s work where she is exploring these questions through not only the visual but the introduction of the aural.

A companion event, Live Score to Adapt Adopt, will take place on Saturday, March 16th, from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. Visitors are invited to view the Sumi ink paintings in Adapt Adopt while listening to artist and musician Damien Olsen Berdichevsky interpret the artwork through this improvised piano soundtrack. Admission is free.

Adapt Adopt features work from Sugawara-Beda’s ongoing series KuroKuroShiro, translated to “black-black-white” in Japanese. The title of this series is indicative of her process using Sumi, a traditional East Asian ink. With the distinctly rich and subtle tones of Sumi, the artist composes monochromatic yet colorful painted worlds in which the viewer can be immersed and commune with an inner, quieter spirit.

Born and raised in Japan, Sugawara-Beda was steeped in a poetic Japanese aesthetic valuing symbolic interpretation over direct representation. It is from this lyrical, and oftentimes philosophical, Japanese sensibility that Sugawara-Beda creates. After moving to the United States and earning an MFA at an American institution, Sugawara-Beda’s Japanese sensibilities were in tension with a Western conceptual framework that often emphasized a definitive end goal. Adapting traditional ink to Western language and adopting Western language within her artistic practice that employs Japanese traditions, the tension initially encountered between these two cultures Sugawara-Beda now cherishes. The images are based on the artist’s own negotiations with traditions she has experienced and the traditions she embodies.

About the Artist

Nishiki Sugawara-Beda is a Japanese-American visual artist focusing on painting and installation, and actively exhibits her work in solo and group exhibitions and offers lectures nationally and internationally. Connecting across space and time, she experiments in ancient Japanese materials and techniques including Sumi ink, Kakejiku landscapes, and rice paper, to merge them with abstract and expressive forms familiar to the modern Western aesthetic.

Her works are in private and public collections including the Dallas Museum of Art (TX) and Dennos Museum (MI). Exhibition venues include the Spartanburg Art Museum (SC), Morris Graves Museum of Art (CA), Dennos Museum (MI), Amos Eno Gallery (NY), and Cris Worley Fine Arts (TX). Publications include New American Paintings, AEQAI, Athenaeum Review, London Post, Art Spiel, and WhiteHot. Awards including a Seed Grant, Diversity Fellowship, International Enhancement Grant, Idaho Arts Fellowship, Sam Taylor Fellowship, Tusen Takk Foundation Residency, and the Dallas Museum of Art’s Otis and Velma Davis Dozier Travel Fund have supported her artistic research.

Currently, Sugawara-Beda is an Associate Professor of Art at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, TX.

About Amos Eno Gallery

Amos Eno Gallery has been a fixture in the New York art scene since 1974 when it opened in Soho. It has moved with changing arts neighborhoods over the years to land at its current space at 56 Bogart St. in Brooklyn, across from the Morgan Ave. L train stop. The gallery is open Thursdays through Sundays from noon to 6 p.m. and is run by a small community of professional artists, both from New York City and across the country, and a part-time director. Amos Eno Gallery’s programs are made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.