Month: October 2023

Yurina Okada, one of biscuit gallery’s represented artists, will be participating in a collaborative project with fashion designer brand JILL STUART, “W/J (With Jill Stuart)”.

Okada will also be participating in the joint production of merchandise for the “Art Collaboration” exhibition.

A total of five types of items, including T-shirts, sweatshirts, hoodies, totes, and tulle bags printed with Okada’s artwork, will be available at the WHAT CAFE pop-up from November 10 (Fri) and at JILL STUART stores nationwide and on the official online site from November 15 (Wed).

【Exhibition Plan】

This project will also feature product collaborations with artists and an exhibition fusing art and apparel in collaboration with WHAT CAFE, an art gallery café in Tennozu operated by Terada Warehouse.
Works by 19 young artists who reinterpret JILL STUART’s seasonal concept will be exhibited and sold, led by yutaokuda and Yurina Okada, who have jointly developed original art items.

Original drawings of the exhibition plans and art items created for the collaboration will be on display and for sale, allowing visitors to experience a new exhibition space where art and apparel are fused together.

WHAT CAFE, where the exhibition will be held, will offer a special menu during the exhibition period: “Blooming sweets plate,” a plate of sweets inspired by JILL STUART’s seasonal concept. Those who order the sweets plate will receive an artist sticker by either yutaokuda or Yurina Okada as a special gift with purchase.
*The artist stickers will be discontinued as soon as the number of the stickers reaches the allotted number to be distributed.

Exhibition Information

WHAT CAFE EXHIBITION vol.31

Dates: Friday, November 10 – Sunday, November 26, 2023
Time: 11:00 – 18:00（Closes at 17:00 on the final day）
Location: WHAT CAFE（Higashishinagawa 2-1-11, Shinagawa, Tokyo 140-0002）
Free admission
URL: https://cafe.warehouseofart.org/exhibition/what-cafe-exhibition-vol-31

Collaborating Artists (titles omitted, in no particular order): yutaokuda, Yurina Okada

Participating Artists (titles omitted, in no particular order): ayaka nakamura, Midori Arai, Ryota Kanno, Yuki Sakuta, Saori Hasegawa, Rui Sasaki,  Makiko Takashima, Yuhi Nishoka, Nimyu, MANA HIRAI, Atsuki Fujimoto, Saki Matsumura, Kana Minami, Saya Mimura, Takahiro Yumisashi, Yuri Minagawa, Kaoru Yoshioka

Artist Profile

Yurina Okada
1995     Born in Hyogo, Japan
2018     BFA, Kyoto University of the Arts
2020    MFA, Kyoto University of the Arts

Yurina Okada’s work transgresses the realms of painting and photography, posing questions about the possibilities of two-dimensional works for the next generation.

Profile Page

 

 

Kosuke Ajiro

撮影：小俣裕祐

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• 日本語
• 中文

 

Profile

Kosuke Ajiro

1980　Born in Tokyo
2000    Kuwasawa Design School, Visual Design Course, Night School

Selected Exhibitions

Solo Exhibitions
2023
“Cloudy” noir/NOKTA, Shizuoka
“Sally” arflex Tokyo, Tokyo
“Herururu” Kousagisha Gallery, Kyoto
“Jukai” (Sea of Trees), nijigaro Gallery, Tokyo

2022
“Kiri No Naka De” (In the Mist), LIBRAIRIE6, Tokyo
“BARBACHICA” SUNNY BOY BOOKS, Tokyo
“Sally Ocho” (Sally Dynasty), noie extent, Tokyo
“Owari No Nai Yume” (Endless Dream), NADiff modern, Tokyo

2021
“Labyrinth” URESICA, Tokyo

2020
“PARADISE” Native Village, Tokyo
 “Sore Ha Maboroshi” gallery hydrangea, Tokyo
 “Kamisamatachi” (Gods), NADiff modern, Tokyo
 “A Happy Tea Party” Kiri to Ribbon, Tokyo
“Yagi Wo Daiteneru” (Sleeping With A Goat), noir/NOKTA, Shizuoka

2019
“Sokonashi” martha, Osaka
“Sara To E” URESICA, Tokyo
“attic” ondo, Tokyo

2018
“Orenji Yori Gorudo” nowaki, Kyoto
“Огонёк” SUNNY BOY BOOKS, Tokyo

2017
“Sally No Sekeizu” (Sally’s Plan), URESICA, Tokyo
“Po to Pou” nijigaro Gallery, Tokyo
“Coal-Tar Night” Galerie LE MONDE, Tokyo
“Mo Hitotsu No Hanashi” (One More Story), ON READING, Nagoya

2016
“Reinette” ondo, Tokyo/Osaka
“Kimi No Shiranai Machi” greenray+marüte, Taichung, Taiwan
“Soko Ni Todomaru Monotachi” Galerie LE MONDE, Tokyo

2015
“Kimi No Shiranai Machi” ondo, Osaka

2014
“SCROLL” ondo, Osaka
“Kitto So Iu Koto” gallery ie, Osaka

2013
“Yozuri” ondo, Osaka

2011
“Saaberu Fujin” (Madame Saber), Shinjuku Ganka Art Gallery, Tokyo

2010
“fogbound” Shinjuku Ganka Art Gallery, Tokyo

Group Exhibitions
2024
“6 drawings vol.2” biscuit gallery, Tokyo

2023
“Bountiful” QUIET GALLERY, Hong Kong

2021
“Collectors’ Collective Vol.5” biscuit gallery, Tokyo

2020
“ART NAGOYA” HARMAS GALLERY、Nagoya

2019
“aupuni” Shinjuku Ganka Art Gallery, Tokyo

2018  
“Sasa” experiment at 7th, Kaohsiung, Taiwan
“REUNION” Sioribi, Nagano

2014
“YONA YONA” MAISON D’ART, Tokyo

2013
“Tsuji” Shinjuku Ganka Art Gallery, Tokyo

2010
“YOUNG ARTISTS JAPAN VOL.3” tagboat, Tokyo
“WONDER SEEDS 2010” Tokyo Arts and Space (formerly Tokyo Wonder Site), Tokyo

Art Fair
2024
Art Fair Tokyo 2024 (biscuit gallery booth)
Kiaf SEOUL 2024 (biscuit gallery booth)

Concept

Kosuke Ajiro (b. 1980) is a Tokyo-based artist. He continues his pursuit from childhood to capture the “other world” within himself. His practice centers on acrylic painting, and also includes ceramics, sculpture, animation, music, and more. 

This “other world” is based on the artist’s childhood memories, influences, and familiar events, but is presented as the narrative of “an unknown civilization that died out in the medieval period of its development.” It is fiction, but at the same time, it is the artist’s internal reality. As an archaeologist excavating this lost civilization, Ajiro paints and records the history of the distant past as it unfolds before his eyes one after another. The works are ancient relics, which is why they show signs of aging, as if they have decayed. Each work has its own historical setting and context, the characters and imaginary monsters are sometimes given proper names, and the scenes depicted have meaning. The scenes can be labeled as origin myths, lessons, fables, or minor events. These detailed settings develop into the grandiose backdrops of dynasties, creation myths, and civilizations, the full scope of which is still unknown, even to the artist himself. In the “other world,” freed from constraints, we find a variety of absurdities. It is no wonder that cruelty and humor, grotesqueness and cuteness coexist. The artist often has doppelgangers in which he witnesses himself in the form of a “girl” and records them in pictures.

In Ajiro’s works, we can see elements of traditional Japanese picture scrolls, European medieval manuscripts, and various folk religious art from the East and West, especially the influence of Hieronymus Bosch. In terms of the expression of a deeper consciousness, the works can be related to Jung, surrealist visionary art, and outsider art, and also have a close affinity with contemporary Japanese character culture.

■Publications

2022   BARBACHICA, SUNNY BOY BOOKS
2021   Tegami Ga Kitana Kishishishishi, Mishimasha
2018   Saaberu Fujin (Madame Saber), Shogakukan

https://www.instagram.com/kosukeajiro/

• English
• 日本語
• 中文

biscuit gallery (Shibuya, Tokyo), a commercial contemporary art gallery on Shoto Bunkamura Street in Shibuya, is pleased to announce “Rhapsodic Spectrum,” a group exhibition featuring Hal Osawa, Yurina Okada, and Erika Naka. The exhibition will be on view from November 2 to November 19.

The exhibition’s main visual, a collaboration between the three artists, Osawa, Okada, and Naka, is entitled “Caerus,” meaning “opportunity” or “one moment in time.” 

One of the common features of the three artists’ work is what could be called the instantaneous nature of their techniques and the motifs they select. In this exhibition, the three artists interacted with each other to compose the exhibition.

Please take this opportunity to view the results of the unique exchange between these three artists.

 

Artist Profile

Hal Osawa

I make the venture of “bugging” the act of reproduction. While this should result in an act of copying, printed material is transformed into another original work. By reproducing digital reproductions in analog form, I make visible the ambiguity of value in my work.（Hal Osawa）

Yurina Okada

1995　Born in Hyogo
2018　BFA, Kyoto University of the Arts
2020　MFA, Kyoto University of the Arts

Yurina Okada creates new two-dimensional works that interweave painting and photographic techniques.

Profile Page

Erika Naka

1994　Born in Nagano
2019　BFA, Tokyo Zokei University

Erika Naka incorporates symbols and everyday objects she sees into her paintings, characterized by thick layers of acrylic paint.

 

Exhibition Information

Hal Osawa, Yurina Okada, and Erika Naka
“Rhapsodic Spectrum”

Location: biscuit gallery 1F-3F
Dates: Thursday, November 2 – Sunday, November 19, 2023
Time: 13:00 – 19:00 *Closed Monday – Wednesday
Free Admission
Sponsored by biscuit gallery
In collaboration with SH GALLERY

Opening Reception: 15:00 – 19:00, Thursday, November 2

• English
• 日本語
• 中文

biscuit gallery (Shibuya, Tokyo), a commercial contemporary art gallery on Shoto Bunkamura Street in Shibuya, is pleased to announce “re2,” the second iteration of the group show “re.” The exhibition will be on view from October 10.

An opening party will take place on the October 8 (Sunday) from 16:00 to 19:00, featuring handmade catering by Yuki’s Kitchen. The two featured artists are also expected to be in attendance.

biscuit gallery is pleased to announce the exhibition “re vol.2”, featuring Ai Kumehara and Kenta Takahashi, from October 8 to October 28, 2023. Continuing from “re,” this exhibition aims to be a partial sampling of today’s art scene, with the underlying intention of sharing with viewers a place to recapture and rethink our artistic soil today, where Western-compiled contemporary art and Japanese art intersect.

 

The exhibition title, “re,” refers to the prefix meaning “again” or “back”, and for that etymological reason, “re” is accompanied by some original or confronting matter. At the same time, this “thing to confront” is one of the main themes of this exhibition, and the purpose of this exhibition is to reexamine the expression of a part of today’s art scene that exists as a result of the acceptance of contemporary art as an alien species within a country that already had a distinct form of art, and to reconsider the possibilities of “contemporary art” for us without eliminating both of these two factors.

 

However, to avoid misunderstanding, both Kumehara and Takahashi in this exhibition (although they share a broad definition of “contemporary Japan”) are artists with different artistic interests, and the purpose of this project is not to provide an opportunity to analogize their common ground in terms of expression. The gist of this project is twofold: to explore the soil shared by two artists with different orientations, and to introduce the outstanding work of two artists on that soil with intermingling factors. In inviting the two artists, we have introduced the accompanying motif of “surface and depth” in “re” this time. The former is a paraphrase of the expression form of Japanese painting after the 2000s, and the latter is a paraphrase of the expression of the presence or absence of margins in Japanese painting. I hope to build an opportunity to think about our art from two observation points, “what we can see” and “what we cannot see (directly).”

 

Then, what is “depth”? I define “depth” as the area that is not in front of our eyes, but can be sensed by premonition, or the sensibility itself. It is the mind that senses something in the dark and is frightened, the hidden nuance behind the words, or the world in another person’s head. In order to think about this, the exhibition relies on the words “Amari no Kokoro” (a mind of abundance) as described by the mid-Heian poet Fujiwara no Kinto in his “Waka Kuhin” (Nine Grades of Poems), and “Yori-no Kokoro” (Lingering, or emotion that drifts outside of the words) as described by Kamo no Chomei in “Mumyo Sho” (his theory of poetry) in later times. The work is not tangible, but one has the feeling that it is there, just because it does not appear. In this “re” exhibition, we would like to consider this point with paintings by Ai Kumehara, who has intentionally used fixtures to create a blocking effect on her paintings, suggesting an unidentified presence. She creates a duality of “visible and invisible” in her paintings, that is, she presents the viewer with a picture that makes us foresee and imagine existence through absence. This “not in front of you, but you can feel it” is the “inner” touch that I would like to consider in this exhibition, and it seems to me that there are many poetic languages that describe this uncertain sense of touch in the history of art that we carry with us.

 

Kenta Takahashi, on the other hand, is a painter who, in his own words, sees Japanese painting as “something that has remained,” and based on the cultural transformation and alteration of the Meiji and postwar eras, understands and practices the context of Japanese painting today based on his unique historical perspective. His paintings are based on the reality of life in today’s digitized world and the modernity of modern city dwellers, and he incorporates the unique line drawing techniques and particle-like textures of Japanese painting, while mixing them with the sensibilities of the generation born in Japan in the 1990s. Many of his paintings seem to confront the Japanese sense of iconography and painting techniques and attempt to bring them into contemporary painting. “The art history of the place where I happened to be born was not consistent with that of the West at least,” he said. “But I don’t want to despair. I want to think of a positive way to look at it,” he continues, breaking down the complicated intertwined factors of art history into its elements and starting from the soil where they coexisted rather than ignoring each and every one of them, which sometimes seem to contradict each other. It is the part that examines formalism, but only in the way that he adheres to it, and it seems to begin with identifying “what has remained,” to use his words.

Text by: Shinzo Okuoka

Translation by: Elizabeth Jesse

Artist Profile

Ai Kumehara
1989　Born in Saitama
2015　MFA in Japanese Art, Tama Art University

After creating a sketch with highly transparent paints, she applies thin Japanese paper over the entire screen and colors it with rock paints. Once the screen is reset to translucent, the boundaries of colors and shapes are blurred, and the depicted objects are abstracted. The artist depicts animals on the screen as “something suggestive” based on his experience of confronting animals that suddenly appeared in the places where he stayed where people had disappeared due to the lockdown caused by the coronavirus.

Profile Page

Kenta Takahashi
1997　Born in Aichi
2021　BFA in Japanese Art, Tokyo University of the Arts
2023　MFA in Printmaking, Tokyo University of the Arts

Information

biscuit gallery group exhibition
“re2”

Location: biscuit gallery Floors 1 – 3
Participating Artists: Ai Kumehara, Kenta Takahashi
Dates: Sunday, October 8 – Sunday, October 28, 2023
Time: 13:00 – 19:00 *Closed Monday – Wednesday
Free Admission
Collaborator: Shinzo Okuoka
Sponsor: biscuit gallery

Opening Party: October 8, 2023 (Sunday), 16:00 – 19:00
The artists are expected to be in attendance.