Arisa Kumagai

2013 B.A. in Oil Painting Course, Kyoto University of Art & Design, Kyoto, Japan

2015 M.A. in Mixed Media Field, Kyoto University of Art & Design, Kyoto, Japan

Solo Exhibition

2025 “Heaven Stolen”Gallery Koyanagi, Tokyo

2023 “…apparently God is forgiving,”Gallery Koyanagi, Tokyo

2022 “My yearning to beYou,”Gallery Koyanagi, Tokyo

2019 “Single bed,”Gallery Koyanagi, Tokyo

2015 “LeisureClass,” Gallery Art Composition, Tokyo

Selected Group Exhibition

2024 “KEITA MARUYAMA 30th Anniversary Linked Exhibition On Hare Day”,SCÈNE,Tokyo

2024 “MORIOKA Bookstore×Gallery Koyanagi Linked Exhibition One single book ”,Gallery Koyanagi, Tokyo

2024 “TO KYOTO TEN The Echoes of East Kyoto ”,WHAT CAFE,Tokyo

2023 “Mtk Satellite Vol.3 ”, Mtk satellite,Nagoya

2022 “The first MIMOCA EYE ”,Marugame Genichiro-Inokuma Museum of Contemporary Art,Kanagawa

2022 “Under Current”,Powerlong Museum Hall 4 & 5,Shanghai

2020 “Shell Art Award 2020/Shell Artist Selection 2020”,The National Art Center Tokyo,Tokyo

Arisa Kumagai was born in 1991 in Osaka. She lives and works in Kyoto. She graduated the Kyoto University of the Arts in 2013 majoring in painting, and finished the graduate course of Mixed Media Field also at Kyoto University of the Arts in 2015.

Her work indeed reflects her personal experiences. However, what she tries to express is the vulnerability and “helplessness” of human being; how irrational and ironic it may seem, it is a universal truth that rich and poor, life and death, love and hate are one and indivisible. Her masterful realism may be a catharsis, giving form to what she had to see.

The works from the series Leisure Class shown at the “Portrait” exhibition visualized the way of thinking, formed in the course of her upbringing. For this exhibition, she paid more attention to the feeling of others around her, to deepen the original concept. The emotional disturbance incurred by death may in some cases be reflected in the form of dedicated flower, or an object of worship. The children’s shoes or a leather jacket with the deceased’s memory could affect the heart of the ones who were left behind. The artwork depicting such relic, observed through an unimpassioned eye, seems to present an aspect of human nature.

(Gallery Koyanagi)