snake

Artist

Affiliated Gallery

• WAITINGROOM

1990 Born in Tokyo, Japan Currently lives and works in Tokyo. profile photo by Mie Morimoto For me, art offers a tantalizing encounter with a subject that is willing to spar with you. A painting is a space that pushes back against you with a kind of gentle resistance, but which can be oppressive nonetheless. In all the works that I consider to have been well crafted, I feel my body and thoughts churn, rise up, and expand along with this space, like a balloon inflating: I nudge the volume as it swells, tenuously, while the work gradually grows and takes on a tangible shape. Sometimes I can feel myself being repulsed. As my body and thoughts come up and press against this swollen, balloon-like volume, I begin to sense my physicality for the first time, as if I had struck or bumped into something. Making a work is akin to walking across a tightrope with an abyss gaping beneath you. I have to make an extremely strenuous effort to not fall off the rope: it is only through a supreme act of will that I manage to finish the piece without losing my balance. Just like how the reflection in the mirror is both myself and something removed from me, I feel that a finished painting is both a reflection of myself, as well as a foreign other detached from me. Through these reflections, I sense my own bodily contours taking on a sharper definition. For me, to draw is neither to impress an image onto a surface, nor a matter of giving oneself over to the contingencies associated with my materials as they unravel on the canvas. For me, to accept the contingency of others is also to grapple with and learn to accept one’s own physicality. My body reacts instantly to what happens in the real world at the moment that the image in my mind takes shape on the canvas. This process is as much a dialogue as it is a struggle, or a game, or a collaborative endeavor. I try to draw, reflexively, so that my consciousness doesn’t catch up with my hand. I don’t make an attempt to chase after some finished image, nor do I look back to ponder the lines that I have already drawn. I always approach the canvas or paper as if I were furtively pushing my body against a tensely stretched membrane. When I work with wire, resin, or neon, this tension is abruptly manifested in my own body. This is also the moment when the form of the work becomes complete. At first, all I do is to poke roughly at the material, and try to bend it, sometimes violently: it doesn’t always bend to my will, so to speak. (Imagination and expectation travel on a trajectory parallel to reality.) Then, all at once, a form that cleaves perfectly to my own space emerges, and my body senses a pushing back similar to what I feel with my paintings and drawings. As soon as I meet this resistance, the material and the space it occupies that used to be soft and supple seems to congeal and harden, and I am no longer able to intervene. It is almost as if the work has now forsaken me: there is now a membrane-like barrier in between us. I remove my hands, and step back, so that this membrane can remain tense and inflated — and so that I may continue to feel the work pushing back against me. EDUCATION 2017 Tama Art University, Master’s degree, Oil Painting 2015 Tama Art University, Bachelor’s degree, Oil Painting SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2026 The Blade of the Forest Within, Gana Art Hannam / Gana Art Namsan, Seoul, Korea Drift of Water, CAPSULE, Tokyo, Japan 2025 Humans and Tigers, WAITINGROOM, Tokyo, Japan Jump Over, anonymous bldg., Tokyo, Japan The shape of water hardens into stone., Kurobe City Art Museum, Toyama, Japan Inner Vector: 11, 72, 2154, Beyond Gallery, Taipei, Taiwan Please Don’t Disturb, CADAN YURAKUCHO, Tokyo, Japan 2024 softest chain, Kamakura Gallery, Kanagawa Japan Paintings & Drawings - Food, animals, organs, plants, bodies, etc, everything outside me is everywhere in the air. I breathe them in, I breathe them out., Van der Grinten Galerie, Cologne, Germany Under the sun, agnès b. galerie boutique, Tokyo, Japan 2023 Even the pigments in paints were once stones, WAITINGROOM, Tokyo, Japan The Voice of the Soul, ERA GALLERY, Milan, Italy human closely, Lurf Museum, Tokyo, Japan line & colors, N&A Art SITE, Tokyo, Japan 2022 Make yourself at home, Nihombashi Mitsukoshi, Mitsukoshi Contemporary Gallery, Tokyo, Japan Colours in summer, GINZA TSUTAYA BOOKS, GINZA ATRIUM, Tokyo, Japan Lines, Van der Grinten Galerie, Cologne, Germany 2021 Empty Volumes, WAITINGROOM, Tokyo, Japan afterimage aftermyth, Roppongi Hills A/D Gallery, Tokyo, Japan 2020 drawings, WAITINGROOM, Tokyo, Japan drawings, OIL by Bijutsu Techo, Tokyo, Japan Myth & Body, Nihombashi Mitsukoshi, Mitsukoshi Contemporary Gallery, Tokyo, Japan 2018 human wears human / bloom wears bloom, Kamakura Gallery, Kanagawa, Japan Tiger Tiger, burning bright, WAITINGROOM, Tokyo, Japan 2017 Something held and brushed, Tokyo Myoan Gallery, Tokyo, Japan NEWoMan ART wall Vol.7 “Easy Chic Pastels”, NEWoMan ART wall, JR Shinjuku Station, Tokyo, Japan 2016 Back is confidential space. Behind=Elevator, WAITINGROOM, Tokyo, Japan 2015 Collector and Artist vol.1, T-Art Gallery, Tokyo, Japan shiseido art egg 9: Rikako Kawauchi, Shiseido Gallery, Tokyo, Japan GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2026 DONATED WITH LOVE, ALBERTINA KLOSTERNEUBURG, Vienna, Austria Collection 2026, Hirosaki Museum of Contemporary Art, Aomori, Japan THE HEAD, Edward Dwurnik Foundation, Warsaw, Poland Micro Salon, CADAN OTEMACHI, Tokyo, Japan 2025 Plastic Love, Galerie Marguo, Paris, France Arts Maebashi Recent Acquisitions / Collection+ Women Artists, Each Her Own World, Arts Maebashi, Gunma, Japan 5th Anniversary Exhibition Plastic Utopia: Our New Ecosystem, Hirosaki Museum of Contemporary Art, Aomori, Japan Freedom!: Towards A World Filled with Diverse Happiness and Hope, Dai-chi Life Lobby, Tokyo, Japan A Glimpse of the S.F Collection vol. 2, N&A Art SITE, Tokyo, Japan 2024 A Personal View of Japanese Contemporary Art: Takahashi Ryutaro Collection, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan Nurturing Nodes in the Nook of an Odd Sock, ART GALLERY MIYAUCHI, Hiroshima collection #08, rin art association, Gunma Fellow Travelers of the Canvas―A Perspective on Contemporary Art of Japan from the Takahashi Ryutaro Collection, Yamagata Museum of Art, Yamagata SPRING SHOW, WAITINGROOM, Tokyo, Japan From the museum collection 2023: fourth period, Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, Aichi, Japan 2023 The Hints: 12 Perspectives from which we can discern the present and the future, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation East Building Rising Square 1F Earth Garden, Tokyo, Japan Body, Love, Gender, Gana Art Center, Seoul, Korea WORLDS IN BALANCE: ART IN JAPAN FROM THE POSTWAR TO THE PRESENT, Okura Museum of Art, Tokyo, Japan Arts Maebashi 10th Anniversary Exhibition ‘New Horizon—From History to the Future”, Arts Maebashi, Gunma, Japan TRANSFORMATIONS: MATERIAL AND DISSOLUTION, Van der Grinten Galerie, Germany Paper Whispers, Schönfeld Gallery, Brussels, Belgium Good Morning Japan, Nassima Landau Art Foundation, Tel Aviv, Israel VOCA 30 YEARS STORY / KOBE, Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art Branch Haradanomori Gallery, Hyogo, Japan SPRING SHOW, WAITINGROOM, Tokyo, Japan From the museum collection 2022: third period, Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, Aichi, Japan 2022 OKETA COLLECTION: YES YOU CAN, WHAT MUSEUM, Tokyo, Japan OKETA COLLECTION: THE SIRIUS, Spiral Garden, Tokyo, Japan VOCA 30 Years Story / Tokyo, The fiest foor lobby of the Dai-ichi Life Group Hibiya Head Office, Tokyo, Japan VOCA 2022, The Ueno Royal Museum, Tokyo, Japan SPRING SHOW, WAITINGROOM, Tokyo, Japan 2021 TERRADA ART AWARD 2021 Finalists Exhibition, Warehouse TERRADA G3-6F, Tokyo, Japan Abstraction by CADAN, Isetan Shinjuku Store Main Building 6F art gallery, Tokyo, Japan Viewing Room Exhibition, WAITINGROOM, Tokyo, Japan 2020 -Inside the Collector’s Vault, vol.1-, WHAT MUSEUM, Tokyo, Japan 10TH, WAITINGROOM, Tokyo, Japan Input / Output, GINZA TSUTAYA BOOKS GINZA ATRIUM, Tokyo, Japan Blossoming of individuality Post-Isaku generation, people who left the Bunka Gakuin from Showa to Heisei, Musee Le Vent, Karuizawa, Nagano, Japan Spinner Markt, Spiral Garden, Tokyo, Japan Viewing Room Exhibition, WAITINGROOM, Tokyo, Japan 2019 Photo, 3F/3kai, Tokyo, Japan drawings, Gallery Koyanagi, Tokyo, Japan 2018 Museum of Together - Circus, Shibuya Hikarie 8/COURT, Tokyo, Japan 2017 spiral take art collection 2017 "SHU SHU SHU SHO", Spiral Garden, Tokyo, Japan NEWSPACE, WAITINGROOM, Tokyo, Japan Museum of Together, Spiral Garden, Tokyo, Japan Joint Graduation Exhibition of 5 Art Universities in Tokyo, The National Art Center Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan 2016 Stereotypical, Gallery PARC, Kyoto, Japan 2015 Dead Henge / Aesthetic, HIGURE 17-15 cas, Tokyo, Japan 2014 The 1st CAF Award - Winning Award Exhibition, TABLOID GALLERY, Tokyo, Japan That I shall say goodnight till it be morrow, Shinjuku Ophthalmologist（Ganka） Gallery, Tokyo, Japan 2013 TOTSU Exhibition, TKP Theater Kashiwa, Art Line Kashiwa 2013, Chiba, Japan Home Made Family, CASHI Refregilater, Tokyo, Japan Sleep No More, Tama Art University Art Festival, Tokyo, Japan 2012 OTHER PAINTING XI, Pepper’s Gallery, Tokyo, Japan TOTSU Exhibition, Sogo Kashiwa, Art Line Kashiwa 2012, Chiba, Japan Donuts k, Tama Art University Art Festival, Tokyo, Japan AWARDS 2022 VOCA AWARD 2022 2021 TERRADA ART AWARD Finalist, Yuki Terase Award 2015 shiseido art egg AWARD 2014 The 1st CAF Award, Kenjiro Hosaka Award Monex, Inc. ART IN THE OFFICE 2014 PUBLIC COLLECTION 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Ishikawa ALBERTINA Museum, Vienna, Austria Hirosaki Museum of Contemporary Art, Aomori Arts Maebashi, Gunma Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, Tokyo Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, Aichi Dai-ichi Life Insurance Company, Tokyo Takahashi Ryutaro Collection, Tokyo Monex, Inc., Tokyo

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