Maki Fine Arts is pleased to present a solo exhibition titled “Waves and Sea” featuring new artworks by artist Keisuke Shirota from May 25 (Sat) to June 23 (Sun).

Shirota’s works expand beyond the edges of the incorporated photographic images, adding oil painted extensions of a scene to visualize the uncertainty of memory that lies just beyond vision – inviting the viewer to meditate on what it truly means to see. The painted areas around the photographs leverage cues from the original images to extend the scene, but the intentional misalignment and intermittent white margins elicit the fragmented, halting, and often ambiguous nature of memory. While leaving these purposeful traces as he works, Shirota stitches together multiple disparate images into a resulting unified whole.

Shirota’s third solo exhibition at Maki Fine Arts showcases his new series of seascapes; a familiar and universal motif plucked from Shirota’s daily life.

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Waves and Sea

It has been eight years since I moved to a city by the sea. While not particularly engaged in seaside amusements as such, as I’ve strolled the shores, watched the waves, and spent time with my children there, the seaside has become part of my daily life. Living in a country surrounded on all sides by water with as much seismic activity as this one, living near the sea does carry its risks, but I like to think I understand them well. 

Reflecting on the benefits and risks of the ocean has led me to create many paintings and photographs on the theme and each time I look seaward, art seems to track its way across the recesses of my mind. Although I understand full well that the ocean has been explored as a theme by many before me, I’ve come to feel it inevitable that I too must explore her depths. My process typically begins with reconsidering random pairings of nondescript photographs taken from daily life, but this is the first time I’ve shot a body of images centered around a single theme. 

The photographs used in the works presented in this exhibition were selected from a body of more than two thousand, but the many photos I didn’t take, and paintings I didn’t paint outnumber even those. Without the endless sea of choices not made – appearing and disappearing like waves crashing on the shore – the works collected here could not exist. 

Keisuke Shirota

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Keisuke Shirota
Born 1975 in Kanagawa, Japan. His recent exhibitions include Yokosuka felt by parent and children. Works born from child rearing ( group, YOKOSUKA ART CENTER, 2023), Beyond the Frame (two person,  haco -art brewing gallery- , 2023), ( group, Chigasaki City Museum of Art, 2022), Out of the frame (solo, Maki Fine Arts, 2022), Over (solo, Maki Fine Arts, 2021), PAINT,SEEING PHOTOS (solo, Chigasaki City Museum of Art, 2019-2020).