Theaterlab presents [im]permanence featuring action painter Naoki Iwakawa.

Iwakawa will perform a live public painting on the street level gates at 357 West 36th Street (between 8th and 9th Avenue). His ecstatic live painting is a performative work of art that exists fundamentally in the moment, while creating a painting with a lasting life that further affixes us to our space. In the future, other artists to repaint the gates over again and again to build the layers of history in a series called [im]permanence.

Naoki Iwakawa was born in Osaka, Japan. He moved to the States in 1991. In 1996, he founded The Cave in Williamsburg, Brooklyn with Shige Moriya and became an artist-in-residence there. His work has been shown at OK Harris, Art Gotham, 450 Broadway Gallery and Cast Iron Gallery, in NYC. He was voted best action painter by The Village Voice. Naoki is also the master sushi chef at the excellent Japanese restaurant, GEN in Brooklyn. In his work Iwakawa brings to fruition a rare sensibility capable of merging the chaotic and Dionysian quality of experience with the meditative quality of action.

This round of [im]permanence is a celebration of Theaterlab’s first five years (2013-2018) in its Midtown home as well as its next five years (2018-2023) in the space. The event is free and open to the public.

Theaterlab is a New York City-based non-profit dedicated to presenting experimental, international and devised work. Theaterlab has produced and presented new work by Reut Shemesh, Nicole Renaud, Jacques Perdigues, Carolina Fonseca, Reno, Patrick Grant, Linda Olthof, Jef Johnson and The TRIP as well as Hotel New Work, an ongoing open studio series (Loading Dock Theater, DODO, This Is Not a Theatre Company, Convergences Theatre Collective). The DAMN! Film Series, a resident project, was nominated for a 2015 Bessie Award for Outstanding Performance for its post-screening dance show featuring Lil Buck, DPKOM and Ryan “The Mind” Haskett. Theaterlab’s productions include Three Sisters Come and Go, which examines the work of Samuel Beckett and Anton Chekhov through the lens of French philosopher Julia Kristeva; Snow in the Living Room, which refracts the Grimms’ fairy tale through the Tibetan Bardo and Let Me Cook for You, Orietta Crispino’s solo series on inherited myths. For more information, visit www.theaterlabnyc.com.