"THE EDEN" SUSUMU KAMIJO: Brussels

Robert Frost’s Nothing Gold Can Stay (1923) encapsulates nature’s transcendental qualities. The poem elicits feelings of transformation and tranquillity, attending to the notion that we should strive to find stillness in the everyday, through moments of calm and clarity. The exhibition “The Eden” at Stems Gallery, the notion of serenity is rendered in a colourful mosaic of paintings and the natural world. The recurrence of fish as a motif is central, where a constellation of patchwork sea life renders and emerges throughout a series of paintings. The palette of pastels comprising these paintings is, on first view, not over-opposing despite their eclectic mix of primary colours. It is their enigmatic relationship which creates a gentle, sombre composition, and a sense of unification. The process of inspiration, Kamijo tells me, starts with an intuitive approach to daily life. 

 

The paintings do not harness a coherent narrative or linear time. Instead, they dwell together as a subliminal whole, traversing the boundaries of each artwork. Upon viewing, they could be constituting a singular world, one without boundaries or rules, logic or narrative. A world formed by intuition and calm. I like to think of the experience of fishing, too: the tranquil, meditative space of waiting in stillness, next to water, with no intention or aim. These paintings ask the viewer to retain as an aperture of what can be whimsical, sentimental, and celebrated. 

 

However, the most compelling about these paintings is their relationship to reduction through the simplicity of forms and shapes. “Likeness” or the hyperreal is not the underpinning intention of these works. Instead, it is the comprehensibility of imagination and subconscious that drives their aestheticisation. The simplicity of the titles adheres to the unification of calm and serenity. Words such as “jump”, “mingling”, “twilight swim” and “sunset bloom” are literal descriptions of the scenes depicted. In Twilight Swim (2025), three fish appear to be swimming in tandem at sunset, juxtaposed in front of a backdrop of a blood-red sun and earth-brown hills. In Mingling (2025) the same trio are posited in a circular synergy. Kamijo’s subjects are often in vast open spaces, devoid of narrative and context. Many of the paintings capture these celestial moments of natural transition, twilight hours, sunrise and fall.

 

Notions of “Eden” in this exhibition are not subject to a meditation on the religious pursuit of perfection. Kamijo’s paintings invite us instead to a renewed state of mind, a transcendental way of being, devoid of industrialisation and modernity. When encountering these paintings, we might just be removed from these burdens and propelled into a world of tranquillity.