KOSAKU KANECHIKA is pleased to present works by six artists—Yutaka Aoki, Junko Oki, Takuro Kuwata, Ataru Sato, Noritaka Tatehana, and Hiroto Tomonaga—at Tokyo Gendai 2024.

Yutaka Aoki uses acrylic paint to create abstract works with substantial impasto to study light and its organic, three-dimensional qualities. Aoki observes light as a multi-faceted element that grants information on the world and is also an indicator of the passage of time. His paintings oscillate between two- and three-dimensionality, and respond not only to materials and production processes, but also to specific elements in their environment, including the relationship with the audience’s gaze, the passage of time, and the conditions of the exhibition space. Light imbues his work with an intrinsic richness, providing a visual experience that awakens the natural human senses desensitized by our increasingly digital lives.

Junko Oki engraves stories of life onto textiles, with each stitch placed meticulously by hand. Without the guide of an underdrawing, she creates unique motifs and patterns by freehand stitching and by rejecting the structured tradition of embroidery. Although her works display seemingly rudimentary techniques, the artist’s instinctive approach awakens a visceral reaction in viewers. Through her unique embroidery and careful attention, Junko Oki breathes new life into aged textiles, frames, and other objects. These objects, with years of stories already embedded into them, are revived by Okiʼs hand through a series of attentive stitches. They include everything that came into being, and chronologies that once existed but are now gone. At the core of Okiʼs creative process is a discovery of new horizons through layered impressions of time.

Takuro Kuwata has rapidly expanded the possibilities of ceramic art by creating works of an unparalleled nature that have been exhibited globally in Brussels, London, and New York. Kuwata’s contemporary visual language, which utilizes techniques of traditional Japanese pottery such as kairagi and ishihaze in a novel manner, has garnered international acclaim. Situated at the heart of Japanese ceramic artistry, Kuwata’s studio in the Mino region of Gifu retains history and techniques dating back to feudal Japan. Inheriting the traditional tea ceremony aesthetic of wabi-sabi, his works embrace imperfect beauty and natural forms that are celebrated in the preservation of a rustic, unrefined elegance. Through dialogue with the environment, history, nature, and time, Kuwata fuses together elements of tradition and modernity.

For Ataru Sato, drawing and painting are tools to chronicle and interpret the complexity of human life around him, exploring personal themes in strikingly honest and at times provocative imagery. He sees art as being created by people who are alive to express their lived experiences and has no aspiration to create art for art’s sake, art that is novel, or art that seeks to be meaningful. Sato refuses to shy away from fantasies, shame, loneliness, pain, or indulgences, matters that are typically considered indecent or immoral but are nonetheless integral aspects of the psyche. He opens a direct portal into a psychological investigation of his lived experience.

Noritaka Tatehana presents a never-before-seen perspective and worldview by combining elements of traditional Japanese culture with values of the contemporary world. His carefully honed artistry is elegantly expressed throughout his various mediums. Nurturing the sensitivities of a rich history, mythology, and innovation, Tatehana’s work brims with his potential and hopes for the future. The artist is renowned for his trademark works titled “Heel-less Shoes,” which are inspired by the elevated wooden clogs worn by traditional Japanese courtesans. These works have attracted global recognition since being worn by celebrities including Lady Gaga. To date, Tatehana’s work has been collected by institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.

Hiroto Tomonaga captures transitory moments in which things he is looking at ever so briefly appear to him as something else, and strives to render this in painting. He plays with shifts in perception, the way vision alternates between foreground and background, or interprets one thing as another, all of which is similarly echoed in the repetitive back and forth in his layering, removing, and mark making with paint. In this way, the changes that occur before his eyes gradually translate into paint on the canvas, becoming fixed on the surface. Working with subject matter close to himself, this process is a means for Tomonaga to ruminate on distance and depth, both physical and emotional. While the resulting paintings are fixed, they feel as if they might resume moving once again, and express the sense of helplessness the artist himself feels regarding the world he sees before him.

This presentation for Tokyo Gendai 2024 will consist of approximately 20 works by the six artists.