Keita Morimoto paints the night like a contemporary vision of Hopper's Nighthawks. There is human elements and a slight hint of movement in the late night scenes in a Morimoto universe, and the same quiet intensity of being a voyeur in those vulnerable hours. There is just something on the edge of a ghostly happening, a surreal and cinematic distance between you and the scenes before you that is unsettling and yet safe. Our relationship between midnight and dawn is often associated with excess, a night out that lingers into morning, a blurred sense of reality that comes from being at a late-night club, closing down a bar, hanging out with friends as the dark skies to turn to the pink glow of morning. But what we often don't consider is the necessity that the world provides as a 24-hour place, something the urban centers offer but not many of us partake in.
Morimoto's To Nowhere and Back at Almine Rech Tribeca is a play between what a city offers and what we need from a city that never sleeps. They are paintings that remind us of both the magic of the night and the otherworldly feeling the night gives us when we see that it is a moving, acting force of life. —Evan Pricco
