2024.10.27

Mami HIRANO “METAMORPHOSES”

Maki Fine Arts is pleased to present METAMORPHOSES, a solo exhibition by Mami Hirano. The exhibition will open on November 30 (Sat) and run until January 12 (Sun) 2025. This will be the artist’s second solo show with the gallery.

Hirano is best known for her work, Revive a Unicorn (2014–), an ongoing project that attempts to materialize an imaginary unicorn through elaborate fabrication of its skeleton, organs, muscles, and skin. Equally important as her lifework is METAMORPHOSES (2018–).

In METAMORPHOSES, Hirano CT scans an urn containing the skeletal remains of her deceased dog and 3D prints them as glass or ceramic objects. The work is a practical endeavor to preserve and eternalize the lost life in the actual world. The methods Hirano uses to bring the remains back to existence are pâte de verre, an ancient glasswork technique originating in Mesopotamia, and ceramics. Transformed by her meticulous craft, the objects emerge, as if illuminated from within the deep darkness, as a sublime monument of memory.

The exhibition unveils a new iteration of this ongoing project, expanded with newly introduced processes. The new pieces include X-ray photographs of the remains and a dog-shaped photographic composition consisting of drawings of the dog skull and 3D-printed resin bone parts. Also showcased is a newly created piece inspired by Latin text from the opening of the Roman poet Ovid’s work, from which the project draws its title. We invite you to witness the current state of the project evolving since 2018.

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The remains of my beloved dog–who passed away in 2015 after battling illness for five years–still sit in my parents’ living room, not having been put to rest after cremation. When my dog was cremated, I wanted once more to see those small and beautiful remains that my family and I had touched. However, feeling as if the urn was filled with the air of that bittersweet time, I could not open its lid. Once opened, that lost time could never be put back.
One day in 2018, I decided to take a CT scan of the box containing that urn. I turned the scan data of the remains into 3D data and output it with a 3D printer. I then made a mold of the resultant resin version of the remains, transforming them into varied materials, such as glass or ceramic. This act becomes an opportunity to amplify the entirety of this being, who lost everything and all memory at the boundary of death. By touching these varied materials and seeing this figure transform with its beauty intact, I have also come to accept my own transformations.

Modern funerals have kept death away from everyday life so that eventually, the dead no longer exist in society. The dead, hidden under heavy tombstones or in urns, are transformed repeatedly through my funeral methods; I do not lose them. That transformation process is told in this story. — Mami HIRANO

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Mami HIRANO
Born 1989 in Gifu, Japan, Mami Hirano graduated from Tokyo University of the Arts with an MFA in Intermedia Art in 2014. By choosing subject matters that are both real and imaginary–such as a unicorn and her beloved dog who was battling an illness–and faithfully producing all the elements that make up those life forms including bones, innards, muscles, and skin, Hirano creates works about the structures of these life forms, the preservation of life, and the topic of resuscitation. Her works are a deep reflection on absence and death, preservation and creation, and recognition and existence; and invites viewers in this modern age to ponder on how we should face these contemplations.
Hirano’s major shows include, Minami HIDA Art Discovery (2024), Invisibles in the Neo City (2023-24, SusHi Tech Square), solo show (2023, WHITEHOUSE Nao Nakamura), Imaginary Lesson (2023, Maki Fine Arts), Ab-sence/ac-ceptance (2021, The Museum of Fine Arts, Gifu), METAMORPHOSES (2021, 3331 Arts Chiyoda) and Frankenstein in 2018: Bio-art throws light on art, science, and society today (2018, EYE OF GYRE).

2024.9.7

Katsuhisa SATO “KARA / KUU / SORA – PPA”

Maki Fine Arts is pleased to present KARA / KUU / SORA – PPA, a solo exhibition of new artworks by Katsuhisa Sato to be held from September 14 (Sat) until October 13 (Sun).

Sato’s works have exploited the system and format of painting as their subject matter to explore the relationship between color and form. While his playful and humorous works exude lightness, the paradox hidden inside them provokes thoughts about the state of painting.

The exhibited new paintings, created using the staining technique, contain perspective rectangles that are repeated in the same configuration with partial overlaps. The overlapped areas consist of blends of the two colors and simple composition. The resulting pieces are described by Sato as “paintings anyone could create.” “True masterpieces are born when you fully understand where you stand and strive to infuse your works with your ideas and copious knowledge but ultimately leave behind all of them.” Sato’s paradoxical theorem is captured in the works’ title, Uwa no Sora [absence of mind] .
We invite you to experience the tension created on canvas by autonomous forms, the rich variations produced by changing brushstrokes, and the chromatic rhythm generated by a large volume of juxtaposed pieces.

Katsuhisa SATO
Born in 1973, Hiroshima, Japan. Sato received his MFA from Aichi Prefectural University of Fine Arts and Music. Recent shows include “Fuminao SUENAGA, Katsuhisa SATO | ERROR”（group, THE POOL, 2024), Group Show(MtK Contemporary Art, 2024), solo show (See Saw gallery＋hibit, 2023), Same Thing (solo, SHINBI GALLERY, 2023), Insight 28　”hang” (group, Yoshimi Arts, 2023), Collection Beginning – Multiverse / Cat (group, Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, 2023), SHOUONJI ART PROJECT 28th Katsuhisa Sato ”surface / ecafrus” (solo, SHOUONJI, 2021). He is an associate professor at Nagoya Zokei University. His works have been added to collections at The National Museum of Art, Osaka, Toyota Municipal Museum of Art.

2024.8.3

Abstractions – from a certain point –
Yasuko Toyoshima, Katsuhisa Sato, Fuminao Suenaga, Shoko Masunaga

Yasuko TOYOSHIMA
By taking a critical look at institutions and systems found in everyday life and in our society, Toyoshima focuses on creating works that shed light on the patterns found in human thought.

Born in 1967, Saitama, Japan. Toyoshima received her MFA from Tokyo University of the Arts. Recent shows include Origination Method (solo, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, 2023-24), Group Show – Yasuko Toyoshima, Ryosuke Ogino, Makoto Ito (group, 2023-24, Maki Fine Arts),  Enclosure（solo, M gallery, 2021）, Alternating Current 2021（solo, Galleria Finarte, 2021）, PUBLIC DEVICE – Symbolism and Permanence of Sculpture (group, The University Art Museum, Tokyo University of The Arts, Tokyo, 2020).

Katsuhisa SATO
Sato explores the relationship between color and form with humor, using the system and form of painting as his subject matter.

Born in 1973, Hiroshima, Japan. Sato received his MFA from Aichi Prefectural University of Fine Arts and Music. Recent shows include solo show (See Saw gallery＋hibit, 2023), Same Thing (solo, SHINBI GALLERY, 2023), Insight 28　”hang” (group, Yoshimi Arts, 2023), Collection Beginning – Multiverse / Cat (group, Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, 2023), SHOUONJI ART PROJECT 28^th Katsuhisa Sato ”surface / ecafrus” (solo, SHOUONJI, 2021).

Fuminao SUENAGA
His paintings and three-dimensional works are based on visual subject matters inspired by elements relating to exhibition spaces and observations made during day-to-day activities.

Born in 1974, Yamaguchi, Japan. Suenaga graduated from Tokyo Zokei University in 1999 with a major in painting. Recent shows include UTSUSU (group, BOOK AND SONS, 2024), Textural Synthesis (group, Mitsukoshi Contemporary, 2024),Light paintings (solo, Maki Fine Arts, 2024), HEIHA (group, Gallery DEN5, 2023), Group Show – Yoshio Shirakawa | Fuminao Suenaga | Keisuke Shirota | Shunsuke Kano | Sean Micka (group, Maki Fine Arts, 2023).

Shoko MASUNAGA
Her creative process originates from paintings and utilizes a variety of techniques. By focusing on the connections to the surrounding environment and space, her works become fluid and interchangeable.

Born 1980 in Osaka, Japan, Shoko Masunaga graduated from Seian Zokei Junion College in 2001 with a degree in painting. Recent shows include MEMORIES (group, CADAN Yurakucho, 2023), Ginza Curator’s Room #005 Angel’s Perch (group, Shibunkaku Ginza, 2023), What Comes After the Beyond (solo, Maki Fine Arts, 2023), editing (solo, nidi gallery,2022), replace (solo, LOKO Gallery, 2021).

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Abstractions – from a certain point –
Yasuko Toyoshima, Katsuhisa Sato, Fuminao Suenaga, Shoko Masunaga
Date : August 6 – 25, 2024
Venue : CADAN Yurakucho / Kokusai Building 1F, 3-1-1 Marunouchi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo
Open : Tuesday – Friday 11AM-7PM / Saturday, Sunday and National Holidays 11AM – 5PM
Closed : Mondays and Days following National Holidays
link

2024.6.22

Patterns and Distance
Makoto Ito, Shoko Masunaga, Kota Sasaki, Nao Osada, Yuka Hotta

Makoto Ito
Ito’s formal yet light-hearted and humorous sculptural works created using diverse materials embody the possibilities of contemporary sculpture.
Blue Sky (produced in 2017) is one of the pieces that draw inspiration from distant scenery visible from a certain location and portray it as something touchable within easy reach. The work uses a photographed bird deterrent attached to a remote power cable as a motif. It expresses the scale of distance as it converts the miniature version of the actual scenery into a sculpture.

Shoko Masunaga
With painting as her starting point, Masunaga employs diverse production techniques. Her works, which emphasize their relationships with the surrounding environment and space, possess variable and interchangeable qualities.
Session (produced in 2023) is composed of a combination of several shaped canvases. Their colors, lines, and patterns softly link together, as if the adjacent canvases respond to each other, forging rich relationships.

Kota Sasaki
Using 3DCG, Sasaki creates paintings that intersect two and three dimensions through the depiction of spaces such as an atelier or a gallery.
In Untitled, a striped pattern is drawn on a thickly painted canvas. The pattern (two dimensions) is painted onto a rugged-surfaced support structure (three dimensions), creating visual fluctuations caused by different viewing angles. The method produces an illusion of compressed imagery on the canvas, making viewers conscious of the act of seeing.

Nao Osada
Osada creates works using silkscreen to print the surface elements of a familiar object onto the surface of a material different from that of the original item.
In Surface Preparation (Sandpaper 3M), the images on the front and back of a sandpaper sheet are printed on two identical brass pieces, which can be superimposed on one another. Osada’s works uncover ephemerality in trivial objects discarded in our daily lives and elevate them into something poetic. They inspire humble awareness in viewers, unsettling their sense of reality.

Yuka Hotta
With painting as her starting point, Hotta’s creation is centered around drawings and installations. In her recent works, she has experimented to use diverse media as intermediaries to produce drawings and incorporated printing as a method of expression.
Titled C, the series traces an eyeless exploration depicted using bodily senses. Its free and relaxed strokes rely on animated sensation to render images evocative of breathing.

2024.5.10

Keisuke Shirota “Waves and Sea”

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.

—

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). 

2024.3.19

Alex Dodge “A Way With Words”

Maki Fine Arts presents a solo exhibition of new works by Alex Dodge titled A Way With Words. The exhibition will run from April 6 (Sat.) to May 12 (Sun.). This will be Dodge’s third solo show with the gallery, and the first in about two and a half years (the last being in 2021). This exhibition will consist of two parts: Part I, which will be held at Maki Fine Arts, and Part II, which will be held at the GINZA ATRIUM in Ginza Tsutaya Books.

Over the past 20 years Dodge has continued to redefine the act of painting with innovative techniques and processes. Employing a range of software and computer code, his works traverse the virtual and physical worlds. With a unique approach, inspired by various printmaking techniques, Dodge translates his images to canvas with thick layers of oil paint using stencils cut with lasers and other CNC processes. His work is a fusion of advanced digital tools and painstaking manual work using traditional techniques and media. Reflected in his technical process is his perennial subject of technology itself and how it continues to redefine human experience.

The new works for this exhibition take connectivity of language and AI as their general theme. While deeply contemplative in their anticipation of the near and distant future, the work remains playful with interminable humor and levity.

—

A Way With Words 

Part I: Maki Fine Arts (April 6 – May 12) 
Part II: Tsutaya Ginza Atrium, Ginza Six (April 26 – May 15 ) 

At the heart of human experience lies a paradox: our deepest feelings and insights are often ineffable, eluding the grasp of language. Yet, in this digital epoch, language, particularly text, has become indispensable in connecting us. 

Language has been a primary human technology allowing for extensible or shareable virtual spaces; be it in the form of a printed book, song lyrics, or compiled computer code and yet language is not without its limitations. The intersection with visual forms such as painting extend human experience in ways that language alone cannot. In these exhibitions Alex Dodge extends the established use of text in his work, employing his signature humor and formal play, exploring various dimensions of language as a propositional, procedural, poetic, graphical, and tactile construct. “A Way With Words” plays with text in a way that both celebrates its expressive capability while equally laying bare its often comical inadequacy. 

These exhibitions arrive at a moment when our civilization embarks on a new path with language. The rise of computational power, statistical modeling, and algorithmic processing—exemplified by tools like Chat GPT and others—has revolutionized our interaction with text. There is an irony that the GPU (graphics processing unit), originally intended for visual tasks, now drive neural networks and large language models, in reshaping our language landscape in profound ways. This technological leap stirs a philosophical and linguistic debate, in the Western tradition, with figures like Ludwig Wittgenstein and the linguists Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf. Their key premise, the centrality of language in defining and shaping reality, gains new significance as we blend text with AI to generate human experience. In contrast, Eastern philosophies, notably Buddhism and Taoism, regard language as a more limited tool in understanding reality. They advocate transcending language to reach a deeper, direct understanding of reality, as practiced in Buddhist meditation or the Taoist pursuit of intuitive understanding. Fittingly, the exhibition’s second chapter unfolds in Tsutaya bookstore’s Atrium gallery—an inner sanctum of the celebration of language in book form.

Dodge’s paintings are a visual metaphor for this philosophical discourse. Phrases from song lyrics and poetry are transformed into fluffy, pillow-like letters sewn from fabric, taking on almost figurative-like qualities as they inhabit geometrically tiled interiors. These spaces, with their numerical and computationally simulated qualities, represent idealized worlds where language—rendered as languid, floppy, and imperfect pillows—resides. The contrast is striking: the perfection of algorithmically generated spaces against the organic, unconstrained, and imperfect nature of language as portrayed in Dodge’s work.

This exhibition reflects on how new technologies redefine artistic expression. Just as photography’s advent liberated painting to explore new dimensions, the fusion of text and AI challenges and inspires new artistic vistas. Dodge’s work, spanning two decades, has been a testament to this exploration, examining the intersection of virtual systems and painting. 

“A Way With Words” is an invitation to reflect on the nuanced dance between language, technology, and visual forms. Through a blend of humor, play, and thoughtful inquiry, Dodge encourages viewers to engage with these themes, offering a mirror to our complex, ever-changing relationship with language and the reality it seeks to describe.

Alex Dodge

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Alex Dodge
Born 1977 in Denver, Colorado. His recent shows include Daemon-Haunted World (solo, Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery, 2023), Personal Day (solo, BB&M, 2023), Laundry Day : It all comes out in the Wash(solo, Maki Fine Arts, 2021), Programmed: Rules, Codes, and Choreographies in Art, 1965-2018 (Whitney Museum of American Art, 2018-2019). His works have been added to collections at Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum, Museum of Fine Arts Boston.

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Part I :
Alex Dodge “A Way With Words”
April 6 – May 12, 2024
Maki Fine Arts / B1F, 77-5 Tenjin-cho, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo
Wednesday – Saturday 12:00-19:00 / Sunday 12:00 -17:00
Closed on Monday, Tuesday

Part II :
Alex Dodge “A Way With Words”
April 26 – May 15, 2024
GINZA TSUTAYA BOOKS ATRIUM / 6-10-1 Ginza, Chuo-ku, Tokyo
11:00 – 20:00
link

2024.2.3

Fuminao Suenaga “Light paintings”

Maki Fine Arts is pleased to present Light paintings, a solo show by Fuminao Suenaga, from February 17 through March 17, 2024. This will be Suenaga’s fifth solo show since his last show at Maki Fine Arts three and a half years ago.

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A Blow of Lightness—About Fuminao Suenaga’s Light painting show
Keisuke Mori, Chiba City Museum of Art curator

Fuminao Suenaga’s paintings—hand-stretched square canvases divided lengthwise and crosswise into squares of 8, 16, and 32 grids which are then colored individually—are geometric and abstract, yet they convey a certain unique iconography. As referenced by the artist himself, Suenaga uses pixel art (dot paintings) and an iPad in his production process. His works showcased in Light paintings certainly have a correlation with technology and digital devices, even if their resolution may be perceived as “low.” And for visitors of a specific generation, the red vase-like container, the flowers, the crowd, and the explosions laid out in the gallery may evoke nostalgic scenes from computer games and ignite a certain sentimentality.

This new evolution using the iPad, for example, could be pointed out as related to the artist’s earlier series “Search Results,” his pre-pandemic paintings which depicted internet image search results of 20th century modern master artists. Motifs chosen by the artis previously included everyday items found around the artist, such as Post-its, levels, and protective storage boxes. In addition, objects existing in front of the viewer, such as picture frames were used as motifs. In other words, if we take into account the fact that the reproduction or representation of the real word has been done through the production of paintings, then we can understand that even the shimmering paint details evoking the physicality of the works in his newest exhibition can be seen as a pictorialization recognized by the artist in which a luminescent display is included.

Thus, Suenaga’s production philosophy—which is based on the proposition of pictorialization or materialization of real subjects—is a maneuver related to transformation including reduction, compression, substitution, and repetition exercised in the process of abstraction. And therefore, inevitably, it takes on the aspect of a “simulacre” which approximates reality.* Since proximity between the work and the system of painting has been indicated before, these works too, should be read as a mimicry of pixel art and as the artist’s intention of hacking the system itself. In other words, in contrast to its overt expression, only in the symbolic operation of various codes can Suenaga’s paintings secure their existence. So, his works—using a square as a unit and intricately composed with nonlinear combinations of 64, 256, and 1024 color grids—not surprisingly summon many paintings from the past. From Gerhard Richter’s “color chart” to Paul Klee’s grid-like abstract paintings which indirectly influenced the title of his new show, Suenaga’s works elicits the possibility of connection to paintings from the past.

When the visual similarities between each work are casually consumed as excess symbols, however, it may instead cause to decrease the high-order nature of the strategy latent in Suenaga’s paintings. Richter referenced Marcel Duchamp’s readymades in the “color chart” paintings he began creating in 1966 and was strongly influenced by pop art after moving to West Germany. Suenaga has created paintings intended to be practical objects while suppressing its subjects. Roy Lichtenstein’s influence during Suenaga’s earlier artist years and his approach to the medium of print and the continuity to his use of modern digital devices of recent years necessitates us to examine the fine-mesh details of the relationships between the individual paintings and the paintings etched into art history. 

Since starting his path at the end of the 20th century, Suenaga’s artistic journey is about to reach a quarter of a century. His method of production—where multiple media firmly connect to daily life and those complex information environments evolve across the board to materialize the real world—is inseparable from society, and thus seems to have continued to bear the postmodern syndrome that was strongly prevalent at the time his activities began. The lightness indicated in the title of this show is a characteristic that runs through all of Suenaga’s works. The significance and potential of such strategies running parallel to the age of globalism—such as the homogenization or flattening of information and the “lightness” or “smallness” which could be considered the consequence the usurpation of mass—should be examined in more detail. Just as his collection of minimal squares in this exhibition are a maneuver making it possible to link them not only to the multitude of paintings by other artists but to his works from the past, the archival nature frequently seen in recent years must be a highly important aspect for the viewer to understand his works. At least to this writer, these “light paintings” ask us to decode the symbols, while, as previously pointed out regarding the manifestation as a flat surface, they paradoxically provide a complex richness that refuses easy consumption. These works are a ferocious blow or stab equivalent to the weight of the history of the era that has predestined the works. And perhaps, it is the artist’s own ferocity which is felt.

*Simulacre is a concept proposed by French philosopher Jen Baudrillard. It refers to a cultural phenomenon in which replicated symbols saturating the consumer society results in the real world itself becoming symbolized and the perception of conventional things beginning to transform.

—

I admit that I find myself searching for coolness in artillery vehicles when I see them shown during news of war conflicts, even though I understand that it is inappropriate. The realization that the reason for such a thought may have stemmed from my childhood experience with video games became the jumping off point for this show.

Some of the images I created were taken from games while others were digital drawings pixelated by using a pixel drawing app on my iPad. In addition, some images taken from games were altered.

Regardless of which image was used as the original, I copied them while I had my iPad at my side displaying a digital draft of the pixel art. Since the colors seen in the luminescence of the display and the colors seen as a mixture of pigments and mediums differ in the way it is received, there was a step taken in the process to make substitutions and to reconstruct the relationship. When paint is applied by hand and brush, the boundaries between colors are blurred and shifted, creating subtle overflows. Also, although the painting may appear to be painted flat, traces of the brush’s tremor and pressure remain on the surface. The combination of several factors results in a modestly abstract image that is almost faithful to the original painting, but in a different way.

Fuminao Suenaga

2023.11.17

Group Show – Yasuko Toyoshima, Ryosuke Ogino, Makoto Ito

Maki Fine Arts is pleased to present a group show featuring new and recent works by three artists starting Saturday, December 16, through January 28, 2024.

Yasuko Toyoshima
Born in 1967, Saitama, Japan. Toyoshima received her MFA from Tokyo University of the Arts. By taking a critical look at institutions and systems found in everyday life and in our society, Toyoshima focuses on creating works that shed light on the patterns found in human thought. Recent shows include Origination Method (solo, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, 2023-24), PUBLIC DEVICE – Symbolism and Permanence of Sculpture (group, The University Art Museum, Tokyo University of The Arts, Tokyo, 2020), Image Narratives: Literature in Japanese Contemporary Art (group, The National Art Center, Tokyo, 2019). Her works have been added to collections at Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo.

Ryosuke Ogino
Born 1970 in Saitama, Japan. Ogino graduated from the School of Political Science and Economy at Meiji University and completed the B-semi Learning System program. Ogino creates paintings using color layers while examining the relationship between color and form. Recent shows include The Constitution of Japan (group, Aoyama | Meguro, Tokyo, 2023), heliotrope (group, SHOUONJI, Tokyo, 2022), plastic language (solo, See Saw gallery＋hibit, Aichi, 2021). His works have been added to collections at Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo.

Makoto Ito
Born 1955 in Aichi, Japan. Ito received his MFA from Musashino Art University. Recent shows include DOMANI: The Art of Tomorrow (group, The National Art Center, Tokyo, 2022-23), heliotrope (group, SHOUONJI, Tokyo, 2022), Omni-Sculptures -The Scene of Emergence- (group, Musashino Art University Museum & Library, 2021). His works have been added to collections at National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo and Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art.

2023.11.1

Shunsuke Kano “Combined City”

Maki Fine Arts is pleased to present Combined City, a solo show by Shunsuke Kano, starting November 4 through December 3, 2023. This is Kano’s seventh show at the gallery after his last exhibition two and a half years ago. Kano has been presenting photographic works that question the sensation of looking by creating multiple layers on surfaces. His works produce optical illusions in which the order of layer placements and the perception of depth become blurred. In his “layer of my labor” series, for example, several photos are captured to create multi-dimensional layers, compressing the surfaces. In his “Pink Shadow” series, Kano uses photo paper that has been made transparent to allow a viewer to see the front and the back simultaneously.

In his new “Combined City” series, Kano has implemented a different approach, something similar to a photo collage. In his new approach, subjects are captured by camera from various perspectives, and multiple photographs are then pieced together on a surface. The inspiration for his “Combined City” series—where he has actualized a way to see a subject from multiple perspectives simultaneously—came while the artist took in the scenic views while traveling to the city of Kitakyushu in Fukuoka, Japan. Kitakyushu city was created as a result of incorporating five large cities equitably into one, a rarity in Japan compared to the more common way of incorporating a smaller city into a bigger city. Kano has tied the image of Kitakyushu as a combined city consisting of multiple equal cities into his works. While the curved lines traversing and intersecting on the surface evoke topographical boundary lines, adjacent pieces remain unfragmented and intermittently connected, creating a scenic composition possessing a new dimension.

—

You find something on the road. It catches your attention from a distance because it’s shiny, but once you get closer you realize it’s just an ordinary rock. You mindlessly pick it up to look at it and return it to the road before you leave. Even for a simple rock found on the side of a road, by squinting your eyes trying to see what it is from a distance and then examining it by getting closer, with a change in time and distance, multiple perspectives come into existence.

In my “Combined City” series, a single subject is photographed from multiple perspectives. These photos are cut into pieces and then reassembled to enable the viewer to look at multiple perspectives simultaneously.

My goal is to see the condition in which results from uniting multiple perspectives heading into a single subject or from compressing the time we approach a single subject in one sitting.

Shunsuke Kano

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Shunsuke Kano
Born in 1983, Osaka. Recent shows include In the sight of the forest, Adrift in trees (solo, CHISO Gallery, 2023), Gaps in the Sandwich(solo, Kyoto City KYOCERA Museum of Art, The Triangle, 2021), Cascades and Barriers (solo, Maki Fine Arts, 2021).

2023.8.25

Nao Osada “Looking around what’s close at hand”

Maki Fine Arts is pleased to present Looking around what’s close at hand, a solo show by Nao Osada, starting September 9 through October 8, 2023 at the gallery’s new exhibition space: B1F, 77-5 Tenjin-cho, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo (located inside the RUSTIC building)

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A simple overlap
Takuya Nakao, art critic

　There is subject a and subject b. Subjects a and b could both be images or they could both be objects. Alternatively, a and b could be an image and an object or an object and an image.
　Nao Osada replicates an <image> of the <already existing> by reproducing it onto a photograph, onto a print, and onto the raw material. The <object> that becomes the raw material is also <already existing>. The image of the <already exiting> becomes a coating, and that coating is reproduced onto the raw material. If we treat <image> as a and <object> as b, the transition occurs as <b (already existing) à a (photographed image) à b (coating) à b (support medium)>. In other words, the condition of Osada’s works of <transfer of preexisting image onto support medium> becomes the combination of <coating> as <(object=image+object)> and <support medium> as <+object>, thus becoming <(b=a+b)+b>.
　The <image> that is a is <nonexistent>, and the <object> that is b <exists>. In Osada’s works, however, it is important that the <replication> continues—for example, from the <already existing> motif, to the photograph capturing that certain condition, to that material that would be printed upon being ready-made.

a=image [replication]
In a distinction unnoticed by most, two things become identical, and therefore recognized as a replication. Replication places value in sameness, but, invariably, a distinction will emerge, regardless of whether it is noticed or not. The same images that are displayed and duplicated will change into having a characteristic through ownership.

b=object [replication]
Objects are replicated into two- and three-dimensions through <version> or <type>. A <version> of film, data, and silkscreen is printed onto paper, cloth, and other materials, and material becomes a replica through <type>. The replica made through <version> and <type>, however, will contain misalignments and individual variabilities, i.e., stains, smears, wrinkles, or scratches.

　These are accounts regarding the general replication of <image> as well as <object>. In Osada’s works, the <image> of the <already existing> and <ready-made goods> is printed (replicated) as <coating>. At the same time, the <object> of the <already existing> and <ready-made goods> becomes the <support medium>. Then, if all these become replica of the <already existing>, <image of replication=a> becomes <object of replication=b> as coating, and doubly overlaps <object of replication=b> that is the support medium. What Osada ultimately ends up creating is, by overlapping a replication on all a and b in <(b=a+b)+b> which equals <(object=image+object) +object>, a condition where these are recognized (viewed) as one that is <already existing>.
　Yet, in most cases, the coating and support medium are not combined as one (for example, the image of the corrugated box will not overlap the object of the corrugated box). While some exceptions exist, often, the <image> and <object> individually assert its status as a replication. We must now consider a separate frame that derives from the overlap of replica <image> and replica <object>.

a’=image [readymade]
Readymade was given context in the art world and carries a wide interpretation. Instances of Marcel Duchamp reproducing readymade shadows onto photographs, Andy Warhol reproducing readymade designs onto prints, and Peter Fischli and David Weiss reproducing readymades onto other materials indistinguishable from the original come to mind.

b’=object [readymade]
Readymades themselves have characteristics as individual mediums. Just as a tube of paint placed on canvas becomes a painting or an image transferred on print paper becomes a photograph, an image becomes a piece of work when reproduced onto a different medium or support medium, i.e., paper, cloth, wood, rock, metal, acrylic, mirror, glass, window, a part of a building, etc.  

　At the overlap of the <already existing> <image> and <object>, an overlap of visual lines occurs between the ready-made goods <a+b> as non-art and the readymade <a’+b’> as art. Therefore, at the overlap of replication called <(b=a+b)+b>, a potential will exist for a frame called <A{(b=a+b)+b}+B{(b’=a’+b’)+b’}> which overlaps <ready-made goods> A=non art and <readymade> B=art.
　Osada selects <ready-made goods/readymades> of objects a and b, photographs a, and prints it on b to create a new <image/object>. And most importantly, while that image is used as <ready-made goods/readymades>, it is considered more as one that would be discarded. More precisely, the visual line is cast toward the trace of what would be discarded.
　Scattered here and there within the <already existing> images selected by the artist are those that further emphasize the periphery of the replication—for example, those that <envelope>, <support>, or <enveloped>, <supported> the ready-made goods content. In addition, the coating and support medium distinctly overlaps as different mediums. This is when that image of the trace has the appearance of A=non art, yet, in the sense that the selected medium is used as a support medium and reproduced, it reveals the condition of it being B=art. (While the selection of medium is arbitrary, in the sense that it has been deprived of its practicality, artistry in the art world appears.) In this manner, all characteristics including stains, smears, wrinkles, and scratches are moved to the position that overlaps <trace=tache>.
　The coating and support medium are united on a <plane>. Its <painting=2D>-like stains and smears and <sculpture=3D>-like wrinkles and scratches remain in 2D instead of becoming 3D. Moreover, they are reproduced onto the support medium as an <illusion> that is <painting-2D>-like in which the 3D-ness has been copied. When this happens, the replication as imitation (mimesis) is the visualization (2D-ness) of the object which reproduces <ready-made goods/readymades> that contains <trace/tache>, as well as being the materialization (3D-ness) of the image by way of being reproduced on a separate medium. In both the day-to-day (life) and the art (production) in which painting- and sculpture-like <contents> are enveloped, supported, and discarded, this work process is made by way of the <already existing> <image> and <object> located at the edge—not at the center but on the periphery. For this reason, by incorporating the <life/production> cycle of daily life into non-art=A as a nested structure, and by not fixing the visualization or materialization of B=art, it can also be returned to A=non-art.
　In this manner, Osada’s works rotates non-art and art where the frames of non-art and art for <ready-made goods/readymades> and <A{(b=a+b)+b}+B{(b’=a’+b’)+b’}> overlap: in the way <trace> that is A=non-art becomes B=art, and tache that is B=art becomes A=non-art. The <characteristic of an image as a work of art>—the normal position of <original> and <copy> or <aura> and <non-aura>—and what supports it—<plurality of the support medium as a replicate>—reverses positions. In other words, it becomes <B[A{(b=a+b)+b}+B{(b’=a+b’)+b’}]+A[A{(b=a+b)+b}+B{(b’=a’+b’)+b’}]>. What results is an overlap of conditions providing characteristic to <plurality of the support medium as a replicate> as well as providing plurality to <characteristic of an image as a work of art>. Just like a print misalignment, and just like the individual variabilities found in ready-made goods. There is subject a and subject b; on that simple overlap.

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Nao Osada
Born 1988, Nao Osada received her MFA from Tokyo University of the Arts.
Notable shows include, The Constitution of Japan (group, MUJIN-TO Production, 2023), Medium and Dimension Liminal (group, Kakinokisou, 2022), At Least One (solo, Maki Fine Arts, 2022), Playground for the Senses (group, ANB Tokyo, 2022), I see (solo, NADiff Window Gallery, 2022).