Rikako Kawauchi

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