A work of art often reflects an artist’s attempt to articulate their experience of the world, inviting us to engage with their perspective and, in turn, recognise our own connections to it. Fine art can sometimes resist immediate interpretation, even for the seasoned aesthete. Yet there are moments when a piece resonates in such a way that it seems to hold a fragment of our own understanding, expressing something we, too, had sensed but not yet fully grasped.

In moments of intrinsic understanding like this, I suggest that the artist and viewer share a common thread—one that, if pulled through direct conversation, might unravel an intellectual rapport or even a sense of kinship. Such an exchange is less feasible in the realm of canonical artists, where the individual is venerated by the masses. However, in the digital age, where artists at every stage of their careers inhabit expansive social networks, the pursuit of art can become a means of meeting like-minded individuals.

In printmaking and painting, I’m drawn to works with a graphic or geometric foundation that nonetheless evoke an impressionistic sense of feeling, memory, or sentiment. Several overlapping movements and styles offer a framework for what I mean—lyrical abstraction, colour field painting, or perhaps graphic impressionism. These classifications are secondary to me, but they help define a quality that catches my attention in a gallery—one that, to my sensibilities, feels intuitively legible.

When a work engages with cities, I typically pull in closer. Art that responds to its place of creation—whether shaped by or attempting to express something about the urban environment—hints at an inner dialogue that might resemble my own. Yet the city’s influence isn’t always intentional. Some artists consciously explore a place in their work, while others only recognise its imprint once the piece is complete.

As you might expect, the surest way to hold my attention is through a work that engages with Tokyo. About a year ago, I chanced upon a set of prints on Instagram. Though loosely rendered, the images formed a composite of Tokyo’s shitamachi (下町) low-lying landscape—what appeared to me as bridge pylons, a tangle of overhead cables, and the outline of a crosswalk. The assembled elements stirred a familiar sense of walking along the Sumida River.

As it turned out, the Hamburg-based artist, Anja Giese, had participated in a residency at Almost Perfect in Tokyo in November 2022. You might have heard of this programme—it was founded by Luis Mendo and Yuka Okada Martín Mendo, and supported site-specific and research-driven artistic practices, offering artists the space to create work in direct response to the city. Though Almost Perfect closed this month, it was based in a converted 100-year-old rice shop in Kojima, Taitō-ku—a brisk fifteen-minute walk from the Sumida River and the Kuramae neighbourhood that had indeed shaped the piece I’d bookmarked.

Recognising a rendering of Tokyo is nothing unusual, but pinpointing the exact neighbourhood the artist had in mind was a direct hit that prompted me to follow Anja’s work. She is now back in Japan, undertaking a residency at Bridge Studio¹ in Kyoto. I was eager to see how her new surroundings would influence her work, and so, after a year of mutual Instagram likes and the odd DM, we finally caught up for a conversation this week.