In this three-dimensional canvas, three L-shaped sides meet to form the corner of a cube. The canvas moves in and out of real space, physically widening and tapering. These real changes in depth are exaggerated by the painted white, gray, and black planes of the L- shapes, whose arrangement suggests a light source coming from above and left. But where one would expect the edges of the cube to protrude into the viewer’s space, they suddenly slope inward, an effect reinforced by the calculated shifts in value in the blue bands running parallel to the edges. Shozo Nagano’s shaped canvases recall Frank Stella’s Minimalist paintings, but Nagano incorporates the spatial illusions of Op Art––in particular the use of isometric perspective, a system of representing three-dimensional space in which, unlike one-point Renaissance perspective, parallel lines do not converge as they recede. Isometric drawings lend themselves well to spatial ambiguity, as famously in seen in the ambiguous figure type of optical illusion known as Schroeder’s staircase.
–When We Were Young: Rethinking Abstraction From The University At Albany Art Collections (1967-Present)