Furukawa Ukyo

Currently enrolled in the Musashino Art University Graduate School of Art and Design, majoring in oil painting

“Military as content” is drawn with oil painting using digital painting styles such as bugs and blur.

Major solo exhibitions include Furukawa Ukyo Oil Painting Exhibition -MOSH- (Osaka Abeno Harukas Kintetsu Main Store) and EASY DAY (Tokyo Gallery Seek/Caretta Shiodome)

Born in Tochigi Prefecture in 2000

Entered Musashino Art University, Faculty of Art and Design, Department of Oil Painting in 2020

Graduated from Musashino Art University, Faculty of Art and Design, Department of Oil Painting in 2024

Enrolled in the Musashino Art University Graduate School of Art and Design Oil Painting Course in 2025

Awards

2022 Art Olympia 2022 Honorable Mention

2023 3rd ARTIST NEW GATE Grand Prix

2023 19th World Painting Awards Exhibition Excellence Award

Selected for the 2023 Changtei Gallery Exhibition 2023

Group Exhibitions

2023 3rd ARTIST NEW GATE Finalist Exhibition (Osaka, Abeno Harukas Kintetsu Main Store)

2023 Dutch Auction ART NOW vol.2 (Tokyo, Ginza Tsutaya Bookstore)

2023 19th World Painting Awards Exhibition (Tokyo, Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum)

2023 Chotei Gallery Exhibition 2023 (Tokyo, Chotei Gallery)

2024 ARTIST NEW GATE - Matsuzakaya Selection Vol'2- (Aichi, Matsuzakaya Nagoya)

2024 AWAKE EVE. 3-Contemporary Art- (Osaka, Hankyu Mens Osaka)

2024 11th Future Exhibition (Tokyo, Nippon Movie Gallery)

2024 Musashino Art University Suwa Atsushi Laboratory Exhibition MELTING POT (Tokyo, Chotei Gallery)

2025 8th KilalaArt Exhibition (Tochigi, Tobu Utsunomiya Department Store)

2025 Musashino Art University Suwa Atsushi Laboratory Exhibition LINGUA FRANCA (Tokyo, Chotei Gallery)

2025 Different Kyomachibori Art Fair (Osaka, Yasuda Gallery)

solo exhibition

2024 Furukawa Ukyo Oil Painting Exhibition -MOSH- (Osaka, Abeno Harukas Kintetsu Main Store)

2024 EASY DAY (Tokyo, Gallery Seek/Caretta Shiodome)

2025 ART @GINZA (Tokyo, Exhibited from Hotel Monterey Ginza/Shunpudo Gallery)

others

Published in the 2023 March issue of Bijutsu “Messages from 19 Award-Winning Artists”

Published in the 2025 Monthly Bijutsu Next Break 2025/12 issue

It depicts military as content.

I myself am a so-called “milliota” who loves the military, but the military itself is not something I'm usually familiar with, and I almost always watch it through a TV or smartphone monitor.

In the United States during the Gulf War, many media reported images of the war taking place in the far Middle East, and as described the state of watching images of the battlefield through a screen while in a safe home country as “Nintendo War” (apparently called a video game war in Japan), I thought that when something was recognized through a monitor, it would be treated in the same way as digital content such as games and movies.

Depictions such as bugs and blur depicted in the story are incorporated as a kind of homage to digital content, and the scene in the story reminds viewers that they are watching that scene through a monitor.

However, the scenes in the story do not depict actual combat acts, and they are all drawn assuming a scene from training.

Works with military motifs inevitably tend to be linked to images such as social conditions and anti-war, and such connections must be thoroughly avoided when depicting military as content. Therefore, no clear enemies, bloodshed, corpses, etc. appear on the screen. Also, blue, an additional color, often appears on the screen. This blue is a blue that does not exist in nature, and since it is not used for camouflage, it is a color used in actual military during training. By treating that blue like a metaphor for training = simulation, it is used to avoid connections such as social conditions and anti-war.

The training simulates actual battles, and games and movies simulate stories. Just as there is content such as shooting games in games and war movies in movies, the military and the Self-Defense Forces also show the state of training to the public, so there is a high degree of similarity as content. Therefore, I thought it would be appropriate to draw training, so I created it.