Ametsuchi no Uta - Song of Heaven and Earth

Born in Ibaraki, Japan, in 1997.
Graduated from Tohoku University of Art & Design, Department of Fine Arts, Painting Course in 2020.
Completed the Master’s Course in Painting, Department of Art and Design, Tohoku University of Art & Design, in 2022.
She researches the symbiosis between humans and nature, which repeatedly heals and destroys themselves, by observing modern life with a mythological mindset. She is interested in beasts that mix without boundaries even when disaster strikes and creates works using the skin and hair of various beasts before disposal as materials.

Born in Manila, Philippines, 1986. Graduated from Griffith University and Queensland College of Art and Design in 2007. Currently lives and works in Los Baños, Laguna, northern Philippines. Based at the Fruit Juice Factory, he creates artworks by combining ancestral treasures and objects he scavenged or discovered. The social issues that he questions through his work include migration, immigration, and cultural identity. Despite the humorous appearance of his works at first glance, they closely relate to issues that transcend invisible national borders. One of the reasons his parents immigrated from the Philippines to Australia was the educational problems of their children. He graduated from Griffith University and Queensland College of Art and Design (Brisbane) and also is a qualified jewelry maker. His diverse background has led him to create work that suggests multiple roots.

Born in Chiba, Japan, in 1975.
2006-2009 Graduated from Chelsea College of Art and Design, London.
2011-2013 Completed Royal College of Art, London.
Ishida’s paintings have a strange narrative quality inspired by fairy tales and picture books worldwide. Based on meticulous research and the pursuit of form, his paintings have the power to instantly convey an untold story to the viewer and draw them into the story.

Born in Ibaraki, 1977.
In 2002, completed postgraduate studies at Tama Art University.
Utsumi’s paintings are exquisitely detailed pointillistic drawings created with brushes and cotton swabs. The artist features the beauty of the harmony of colors and the depth and breadth of his work that transcends the framework of two-dimensional works. Utsumi has a strong interest in how and what kind of work is placed within a space rather than in painting within a square screen and continues to create with an attitude that is somehow unique among artists of the flat plane. The works seem to draw the viewer into his colorful world, created by viewing his paintings with the viewer’s movement and physicality.

Born in Gifu, 1971.
Graduated from the Department of Sculpture of the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music in 1995.
In 1997, he graduated from the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, majoring in sculpture.
Since being selected for “Tokyo Wonder Wall 2000” with “Open Eyes Closed Eyes,” he has presented dynamic installations and public artworks that transform the exhibition space into an extraordinary world and awaken the viewer’s physical senses, such as the “Echoes” series (Shiseido Gallery, Art Tower Mito, Contemporary Art Museum Kumamoto, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, etc.), “Liminal Air” (Tokyo Wonder Site, Gallery A4, 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art Kanazawa, Asia Pacific Triennale 2009, Hakone Open-Air Museum, etc.), and “Memorial Rebirth” (Yokohama Triennale 2009, etc.) His installations at Hermès (Sèvres, France) and Louis Vuitton fashion show (Paris) have attracted worldwide attention.-

Born in Fukui, Japan, 1978.
2002 Graduated from Musashino Art University, Department of Crafts and Industrial Design, metalworking major.
Kado’s distinctive characteristic is that in his production, he first creates stereotypical “objects” from the materials at hand. It must be a knife, a chair, or a drawer that anyone would see anywhere and everywhere. In other words, if they are not stereotypical “objects,” the significance of the everyday objects as “symbols” will not be realized, or they will have more than necessary meanings attached to them. The other unique aspect of his work is that by combining objects like a puzzle, he shifts the original functions and significance and gives them new meanings. In the “Human Nest” series, a house and a crane are combined to express the uneasiness of the contemporary urban living environment. The unique aspect of Bunpei Kado’s works is that he combines familiar objects to show us something that is actually impossible, and the amplitude of meaning that emerges from this has expanded considerably over the past several years.
Kado, who has been creating unique works as objects, participated in the Setouchi Triennale in the spring of 2013 and showed us a new development of his style by incorporating the meaning of the space and region into his works in places other than museums and galleries, where the space does not have its significance. In addition to combining objects with objects, he will continue to show us more and more how he combines objects with space.

Born in Kyoto in 1978.
Graduated from Kyoto City University of Arts in 2003.
His motifs are mainly figures and miscellaneous goods that contain everyday images. He attracts attention by rhythmically repeating and amplifying the imagery of information continually reproduced in contemporary society. Connecting individual objects disregarding their original meanings brings about unexpected and dynamic expressions.

Born in Fukushima, Japan, 1972. Completed Doctoral Program in Painting at Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music in 2005. Kozaki’s paintings are influenced by the ancient Chinese utopia of TOUGEN and have similarities to the works of Hieronymus Bosch, Nanban Folding Screen, and Rakuchu Rakugai-zu. The use of gold leaf is also noticeable in his artwork. However, a closer look at the details reveals medieval deformities, bizarre animals, futuristic vehicles, and plants and animals that appear to be a genetic hybrid. The painting looks somewhat like a warning against excesses of science and technology in the civilization. Moreover, having experienced the damage caused by the Great Tohoku Earthquake in his hometown of Fukushima Prefecture, the artist is confronting the question of whether “Tohoku painting” is possible at all, with the participation of students from Tohoku University of Art and Design. The presence of Akabeko (red cow) and Kokeshi dolls in his recent works could be a sign of it.

Born in Nagano, Japan, 1996.
Graduated from the Department of Fine Arts, Japanese Painting Course of the Tohoku University of Art & Design in 2018.
Completed Master’s program in Japanese Painting, Department of Art and Design, Tohoku University of Art & Design in 2020.
Scholarship recipient of the Kuma Foundation.
Taking mountains as his main subject, he explores the possibility and existence of a new way of painting by resonating (remixing) the experience (rhythm) accumulated through mountaineering (fieldwork). Based on his sketches, he paints the textures of mountains and rocks with sumi ink, blue ink, and mineral pigments while at the same time creating an inner world in which the actual site overlaps with his thoughts.

Born in Sendai City, Miyagi Prefecture, 1989. 2017 Completed the Doctoral Program in Art and Design, Tohoku University of Art & Design. She is an artist who expresses through painting based on the results of numerous studies and fieldwork on the climate and folklore of the Tohoku region. Like the Rakuchu-Rakugai-zu Folding Screen, many of Tanaka’s paintings start by examining the details in order to decipher the meaning of the larger whole. Tanaka’s works may seem to go against current trends, especially in today’s world, where the impression of an instantaneous image, especially on the Internet, determines the success or failure of an artwork. However, once one turns one’s attention to the details, even if one does not understand the meaning of each of the depicted representations, there is a pleasure in viewing Tanaka’s paintings as if one were unraveling a picture scroll, little by little, from the details to the whole, repeatedly discovering and being surprised. From the solo exhibition to the contemporary, from the local to the global, there is an accumulation of meanings behind the paintings in front of our eyes as an allegory that we must decipher from a contemporary perspective, and the adventure in Tanaka’s works, which has just begun, gives us immeasurable expectations.

Born in 1982 in Yamagata Prefecture.
Graduated from the Graduate School of Tokyo Zokei University in 2007, with a degree in Painting.
From 2007-2010, she worked as an assistant in Painting at Tokyo Zokei University.
Harada has created an imaginary world with houses and parks on the computer and continues to paint landscapes seen from standing in this imaginary space. Trees grow there, and even a gallery exists to display the paintings. The computer-generated landscapes may not appear realistic as they lack atmospheric thickness. As a result, the colors do not have the same ambiguous gradations caused by lighting in the real world. It is an imaginary world depicted in a picture of the world inside a computer from a long time ago. Even so, the sun rises there, and shadows move with time. Harada thus replaces her world, which she created through the simulation of a landscape painting on a canvas in reality, and paints a picture in the real world. Recently, Harada creates three-dimensional works which involve a nested relationship between virtual and physical spaces, in which objects painted in virtual space appear in reality, and are then painted again.

Meal for the Holy Spirit 5
BY Nozomi Tanaka

Octopus
BY Keiji Ishida

Condominium of Houses
BY Bunpei Kado