Opening Reception – Nishiki Sugawara-Beda: 'Scale and Tonality'

Join us to celebrate the opening of 'Scale and Tonality,' a new solo exhibition by Japanese-American artist Nishiki Sugawara-Beda.

Amos Eno Gallery, a non-profit, artist-run gallery, is pleased to present Scale and Tonality, a solo exhibition by artist Nishiki Sugawara-Beda, featuring the new series of work, KuroKuroShiro+. The exhibition will be on view from March 19 to April 26, 2026, with an opening reception on Friday, March 20, from 6 to 8pm at the gallery at 191 Henry St. on New York’s Lower East Side. Live music by the renowned duo Shoko Nagai and Satoshi Takeishi, inspired by Sugawara-Beda’s paintings, will be performed on Thursday, April 9 at 6 pm, followed by an art discussion moderated by Kyoko Sato, a New York-based curator and Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of Japan Contemporaries. A closing reception is also scheduled on Saturday, April 25, from 2 to 5pm. Works and installation images are available to view via Artsy.

For many years, Sugawara-Beda researched and used Sumi ink in her works—a material traditionally used in East Asia for writing and drawing, made from soot and animal glue. She has made her own Sumi by collecting organic materials to burn into soot from various locations across the world. The resulting paintings, a series called KuroKuroShiro, act as a stage for the fusing together of this traditional Japanese craft and matter sourced from specific places that she has been drawn to over the course of her life.

For Scale and Tonality, she is debuting a brand-new body of work, KuroKuroShiro+, which she began in early 2024 with the invitation to artistically respond to Palo Duro Canyon in west Texas, the second largest canyon in the US. Multiple visits to the canyon allowed her to touch, feel, and extract materials from the canyon system and created this series of work that incorporated the materials from Texas. In addition, she collaborated with a New York-based composer, pianist, and accordionist, Shoko Nagai, who created two pieces of music after visiting the canyon with Sugawara-Beda. Springboarded from this experience, Scale and Tonality explores how the titular themes intersect in both the visual and aural realms. Ultimately, this exhibition explores the relationship between scales and tonalites across music and painting through the materials she has harvested and collected from her current home state, Texas, and her native country, Japan.

Amos Eno Gallery’s new, narrow gallery space in Manhattan inspired Sugawara-Beda to envision this exhibition with a large-scale painting, KuroKuroShiro+ Scale and Tonality, consisting of 6 panels as the center piece and aiming to occupy the majority of the viewer’s field of vision. The viewer’s visual experience will be accompanied by music that guides them and highlights the notions of scale and tonality, both physically in the space and visually in the painting. Sugawara-Beda notes that “tonality becomes a guide for the viewer to navigate the painting; in the music, the tonal shifts will help navigate the painting—the observation of tonality is really to create a more meaningful, engaged experience with the painting itself.” Through the monumentality of the painting, as well as the recording of Nagai’s music that will play throughout the gallery, Sugawara-Beda hopes to guide the viewer into new emotional depths of reflection.

For the live music event on April 9, the layers of interpretations can be witnessed through this performance which is the ultimate culmination of the collaboration between the musician and the artist. For this project, Sugawara-Beda said “this synthesis began when I interpreted the music by Nagai and the land to produce a series of work. Then in this live music event, Nagai will interpret my large painting which was the result of my exploration of the relationship between the visual and aural, specifically her music”. Therefore, this event will be the cycle of interpretation through a multi-sensory experience both for the viewers and herself.

Scale and Tonality welcomes the viewers to be immersed both physically with a large-scale painting and aurally with the sound of Nagai’s music, bringing Texas and Japan to New York City.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Nishiki Sugawara-Beda is a Japan-born, Japanese-American visual artist. Through her art, she seeks to find the core of shared humanity, connecting across space and time. To do this, she centers traditional artistic methods from multiple cultures and foregrounds the origins of materials in her artworks.

She holds an MFA in Painting from Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, exhibits her work in solo and group exhibitions, and lectures nationwide and abroad. Her works are in private and public collections including the Dallas Museum of Art (TX) and the Dennos Museum (MI). Currently, she is an Associate Professor and Cox Family Endowed Professor of Painting and Drawing at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.

ABOUT THE GALLERY

Amos Eno Gallery has been a fixture in the New York art scene since 1974 when it opened in Soho. 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.

The gallery is located at 191 Henry Street between Jefferson and Clinton Streets on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. It’s a 5 minute walk from the F Train’s East Broadway Station and a 10 minute walk from the J Train’s Delancey Street - Essex Street Station.

For more information, please contact gallery director Ellen Sturm Niz at director@amoseno.org.

KuroKuroShiro+ Scale and Tonality (detail), 2026. Pigment, Sumi, gypsum, animal glue on muslin wrapped on wood, 61 x 122 inches.