If you can manipulate clay and end up with art, you can manipulate yourself in it as well. —Bruce On May 30, 2024, Nonaka-Hill will open a two-person exhibition of Kentaro Kawabata, a remarkable Japanese porcelain sculptor, alongside Bruce Nauman, who, having built a diverse oeuvre in multi-media, is often cited as one of the most influential American artists of his generation. The exhibition curation was happenstantial at first, inspired by Kentaro Kawabata and Rodney Nonaka-Hill’s 2022 visit to the 59th edition of La Biennale di Venezia: The Milk of Dreams, followed by their viewing of Bruce Nauman: Contrapposto Studies at Pinault Collection’s Punta della Dogana. For Kawabata, who graduated in 2000 from Gifu, Japan’s Tajimi City Pottery Design and Technical Center and exhibited initially in mostly ceramics contexts, this was his first exposure to a vaunted “art world” biennial and to the submersing impact of Nauman’s opus. In the two years since, Nonaka-Hill has contemplated the epiphanies experienced at these two exhibitions, comparing Kawabata and Nauman’s formal qualities, despite the apparent high contrast of the artists’ milieu. The exhibition seeks to collapse and coalesce that conceptual geography.