To Know Where to Go Back, Keita Morimoto Paints “To Nowhere and Back”

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…