Della misura

Della misura
You and I, Who Crossed Paths Along the Way
Uemon Ikeda · Elly Nagaoka · Naoya Takahara

Curated by Simonetta Lux
Under the patronage of the Japanese Cultural Institute (The Japan Foundation 国際交流基金) and the Italy Japan Foundation

Opening
Tuesday, 3 November 2026 · 6.00 pm

La Nube di Oort
Via Principe Eugenio 60 · Rome

On the occasion of Bunka no Hi (文化の日)
Japan’s Culture Day

Exhibition period: 3-24 November 2026
3-9 November: Tuesday to Friday, 5.30–7.30 pm
10-24 November: by appointment
Tel. +39 338 338 7824

La Nube di OOrt, a gallery with a longstanding commitment to Japanese art and culture, celebrates Bunka no Hi (文化の日), Japan’s Culture Day, observed on 3 November and dedicated to culture, the arts, freedom and peace, with the exhibition Della misura. You and I, Who Crossed Paths Along the Way, curated by Simonetta Lux.
The exhibition brings together Uemon Ikeda, Elly Nagaoka and Naoya Takahara, three Japanese artists who live and work in Rome and whose practices unfold at the intersection of different cultures, languages and experiences.
At the heart of the exhibition lies the concept of uprootedness, understood not only as the painful experience of distance from one’s origins, but also as a fertile condition capable of generating new perspectives and unprecedented forms of connection. In Simonetta Lux’s interpretation, the distance between cultural backgrounds becomes a field of possibilities, where Japanese and Italian experiences can meet without losing their distinctive identities.
The exhibition explores this condition through three independent artistic practices, united by a search for an unconditioned gaze upon the world. The notion of measure evoked by the title is not merely a formal consideration; it becomes a way of inhabiting space, questioning language and engaging with reality.
Uemon Ikeda presents a site-specific installation dedicated to the niche, an element that, in his practice, transcends its architectural function to acquire the significance of a mental and conceptual structure. Through red thread, the artist traces its tensions and dynamism, transforming the space into a field of relationships and energy. The niche thus becomes an unavoidable presence within thought, as suggested by the poem Ikeda dedicates to it. His research takes shape in an essential form, in which the installation asserts the freedom of the gaze and resists any purely decorative function.
In the Vocali (Vowels) series, Elly Nagaoka investigates the relationship between voice, language and existence. Her practice focuses on the profound desire to affirm one’s presence in the world, through an exploration that intertwines bodily experience, memory and reflection on sound. The curator draws attention to a striking feature of the Japanese language: the term boin (母音), meaning “vowel”, is composed of characters that refer to the “mother sound”. This association opens up a reflection on the origins of voice and language, expressed through the measured relationship between paper and ink. The works give form to a silent music in which the mark becomes the expression of a voice seeking to affirm its identity without surrendering to the conditions imposed upon it.
Naoya Takahara approaches reality through a gaze that retains the wonder and caution of childhood. In his works, the philosophical legacy of Lee Ufan meets a particular attentiveness to the world and to the distance that can emerge between the observer and what is observed. His islands and the forms emerging from his compositions evoke a universe in which reality is explored, circumscribed and called into question. Between the desire for control, the possibility of connection and the impulse towards negation, Takahara constructs a space for engaging with the world without relinquishing ambiguity or the freedom of experience.
The exhibition also includes a work by Takahara incorporating a fragment of text written for the artist by Simonetta Lux. Within a rectangle, selected letters highlighted in red spell out the word “eye”, introducing a further reflection on seeing and on the ways in which our gaze shapes our relationship with reality.
In Della misura, the encounter between Japan and Italy does not amount to a simple fusion of traditions, but opens up the possibility of a new shared dimension: a koinè, a common space in which differences can generate knowledge and new forms of universality.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue published by Edizioni La Nube di Oort.

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