'Whether eating that fruit leads into the labyrinth, or whether the fruit is there once one gets through the labyrinth, I do not know now. All I know is that a labyrinth is a single path, and that having no branches seems to be one of its characteristics 'Since when did I begin to be aware that I spend my days looking back behind me, or gazing vaguely ahead trying to see what lies beyond, repeatedly going back and forth? And the joint between them is this place where I am now just standing around for no particular reason. The urge suddenly to jump, pon.' Reika Nakayama Flowers and animals appear in Reika Nakayama's works. They are beings that Nakayama met in her dreams. The body of works in which dreams she experienced during her time studying in Mexico are sublimated into the real world and expressed by Nakayama's hand evokes something like a unique kind of mythology. The stories depicted there are embedded in grounds of passionate coloring. The grounds born of Nakayama's distinctive sense of color were inspired during her studies in Mexico, and one can see them becoming more and more refined in recent years. Black animals floating on the beauty of vivid backgrounds, the instant a bird spreads its wings, the instant a polar bear is swimming, the instant a zebra turns its back, are drawn in delicate pencil lines over acrylic, and the impression, as if one could hear the animals breathing, is so full of life that it does not lose to the strength of the backgrounds. Nakayama brilliantly paints the opposing states of dream and reality with an overwhelming three-dimensionality, and a beautiful yet fleeting instant is vividly held in a single canvas. Nakayama's worldview, which invites us viewers, pon, into the joint between background and animal and lets us experience various time axes, harbors an overwhelming dynamism. Looking back. And what can be seen beyond it? Reika Nakayama, whose display in 「絵画の庭」, currently being held at the National Museum of Art, Osaka, is also well received. In addition, the related project 「街へ出た『絵画の庭』」 is being held at graf Osaka and Cassina ixc. Osaka. Please experience the world of Reika Nakayama, where reality and reverie intersect.