Maki Fine Arts is pleased to present new works by Wataru Yamakami. This is his first solo show by the winner of last year's Taro Okamoto special award, featuring 10 new oil paintings on the theme of humans and their environment.

"About Wataru Yamakami"
Toshio Shimizu (Art Critic, Professor at Gakushuin Women's College)

Wataru Yamakami is attracted to slime mold.

Slime mold was the living organism that Kumagusu Minakata was researching. Slime molds grow by swallowing other slime molds and moving. It is a moving plant. It is a plant, but an animal at the same time. Three dimensional, and simultaneously four dimensional, a living organism that is real, and yet not real.

Just like Kumagusu Minakata inhabited the forest of Kumano, Yamakami is living in the forest of Shinano. This is because the Shinano forest is a nurtures the slime mold. The Slime Mold is born and grows up in the mountains of Shinano. It flies from tree branch to tree branch, moving. Yamakami wanders in the depths of the forest chasing the Slime Mold, breaking through the boundaries of the imagination.

What lies beyond the imagination is a space of multiple layers of other dimensions that exist at the same time. The space that Yamakami creates, like plants that are animals, does not just sit there quietly, breathing, but through time, it is expanding, moving, and shining. It is not an illusion. In the mountains, one can feel it, and see it.

The forest of Shinano has a spot where you can go to the other side. The Slime Mold is that spot itself and the entrance.

Yamakami will be in the mountains, for a long while.

[Bio Wataru Yamakami]

Yamakami was born in 1981 in Kochi-city, and grew up in Nagano city. At age 18, Yamakami traveled to Okinawa, Thailand, and India. After his travels, Yamakami became interested in Shamanism, and continued to wander through many countries, such as Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina. He continued his research and travels, and presented a body of work entitled "Everything is connected". In 2009, he was awarded the Okamoto Taro Special Award. Currently he lives and works in Omachi City, Nagano.