About her by Hamlet Mateo, 2019

Born in Tokyo, Japan, Naomi uses swirly semi transparent shapes that satirize manga conventions but soon veer towards the abstract. Forms blend: one faceless creature and a dog; one painting of big hopeful yellow eyes and a huge smile resembles Mickey Mouse and sinks into a sad, pink world. This type of work questions the value of instruments and objects of daily life we’ve come to see as secure. 

Her work seems idiosyncratic, deeply guarded and personal. Ethereal and solitary. But it is not. There’s a certain aspect of sensationalism in her work. A certain eroticism that comes from the bodies themselves, and the way in which they appear against or through each other. There’s also the erotic nature of their shape. There’s a thin line between the melancholy expressions of big sad manga eyes and the more obvious parts of the body.

But her paintings go beyond the body and deep emotion to  highlight a landscape of unbridled consumerism and Western affluence. Many of her works conjure feelings of over-manufactured toys and brands. In the end, her investment to show a mad and manufactured body and emotional reach shows us something we might resent, but not ready to part with.

Her puzzling and poetic works depend on dark color biomorphs. The idea is to be a map, of a neighborhood, or a whole city. Looking closer one finds astronauts and aliens marveling at each other; then they howl and burst.

There is a feeling of abandon, of loss of control, but they never feel improvised. They’re always watching and ever cunning.

Her ever-flowing Surrealist style, with moments of abstraction, show gelatinous spirals, still looking like wet paint. But it is a frozen world. One only wants to look at it from a distance. It is that cold.