Doll painting: featuring Amane

Material: oil on canvas

As we continue to face painting, we are repeatedly drawn back to questions about why we draw and what can be painted.

That question cannot be solved all at once; it is raised many times during production, and continues while changing its appearance.

While the members gathered here have different backgrounds, they are exploring the existence of “painting,” which has not yet been fully defined, with their own moves and speed.

From prehistoric cave paintings to religious paintings, perspective, impressionism, cubism, abstract expressionism, conceptual art — and until now, where AI generates images in one second, paintings have always been updated along with the question “is this also a painting?” The Tokyo University of the Arts Oil Painting Laboratory 6 is exploring how these conditions can be expanded from each production while re-questioning the relationship between the discovered support and the body and the very act of “seeing” the unique conditions — space, time, and light — that establish the medium of painting from such a long time axis. This series of events is also a series of questions, “How do humans see the world?”

The time that these members can gather in this laboratory in 2026 is actually only 1 year.

The current laboratory consists of 11 students, including 4 2nd graders, 4 1st graders, 1 international student, assistants, and professors.

The themes and methods of each production are very different, and relationships between works are not defined in advance.

Production is originally an extremely personal and solitary activity, but here, the presence of others and everyday events quietly creep into the interior of the production as if mixing colors.

Comments heard from next to each other, casual conversations, and time exchanged between productions. They gradually begin to function as something inseparable from production.

The events that occur there often appear as coincidental ones. However, we do not overlook them as mere coincidences or transient miracles, but connect to production by continuing to have an attitude of trying to find relationships and meanings within them.

Coincidence is not simply an uncertain factor; it is an opportunity to expand the possibilities of painting.

The title “GABE (gift)” does not indicate the very coincidence that they gathered here. Rather, it shows our very attitude about how we take that coincidence, find meaning and relationships in it, and connect it to production. I wonder if the slight misalignment or overlap that occurs within it, or a series of incidental events, will appear as a turning point in the history of painting as each one progresses from now on.

We still believe in something that can only be revealed through the medium of painting.

Everyone from Tokyo University of the Arts Oil Painting Laboratory 6