Gallery's Picks for the Month（ Winter Gifts）

Goro Murayama, ”Generative Drawing [Rhizome] - Ochre, vermilion, green," 2022, Japanese paper on panel, acrylic, 29.7 x 42 x 2cm

This drawing, reminiscent of the formation of plants, follows the style of the wall painting shown on the first floor of an old private house on Ogijima at the Setouchi Triennale 2022. The drawing pattern is derived and developed by formally incorporating the branching rules of plant trees and rhizomes. There is also an image of plant ivy entering the ruins, growing overgrown, and filling the space more and more. This is another work that embodies a certain kind of time, in which the artist's own three-month residency has caused a learned drift in the drawing patterns.

Teppei Kaneuji, ”Teenage Fan Club #108”, 2022, plastic figurine, hot glue 13.5 × 10.5 × 8.5 cm

The Teenage Fan Club series is a collage of different narratives, scales, times, fashions, rules, and perspectives in the form of phenomenological figures. The motif of hair is one of the most important motifs in the history of sculpture and can be seen as an entity between body and matter.
The fact that I could not get close to the stage at a big concert and was viewing the show from the back of the audience, where I could not even see the top of the stage and only the back of a large number of heads wriggling to a single rhythm, looked like a single fluid monster, also inspired me to create this specific work. (artist's comment, 2022)

Todo, "Snow on the roof - Matsunoyama Kurokura," 2022, Shinano River tributary stones, laminated glass 12.5 x 11 x 8cm

The Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale was held in the summer of 2022 in the Echigo-Tsumari region of Niigata Prefecture. The "Palace Kurokura," an entire old private house that was transformed into a work of art, attracted particular attention during the festival for its creation of a new space in collaboration with the villagers. The work was created with the image of snow on the roof of a house in the village of Kurokura, where it was set, and was made of stones picked up from the nearby Shinano River.

This work, depicting botanical patterns in a circular format, was shown at his solo exhibition in Taipei in 2013, titled Tree of Life, where the silhouette of a cherry tree was painted from the floor to the wall, and a number of colorful circular flowers like this were placed on top of it. The motifs of the painted flowers are plant patterns inspired by traditional Taiwanese textiles, and they are lightly placed within the circles, and the beauty of the edges of the pigments is visible when you get close to the flowers.

The Echoes-Infinity series is Ohmaki's representative series that deals with themes such as "disappearance and rebirth" and "time and memory," and has been developed in a variety of settings. The installations at the Shiseido Gallery (2005), the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (2010), and the Hermes Museum and Singapore Art Museum (2012), which enveloped the viewer's entire body, remain in the viewer's mind with physical memories even after the work has disappeared. This work, however, is a collection of such experiences packed into a single closed space.

Keiji Ishida "Chicken" 2021 Oil on canvas 35 x 30 x 2cm

According to the artist, "I think the reason why animals appear in my paintings is because of my love for picture books and mysterious folklore. I hope that viewers will pause for a moment to reflect on a world that is not overly bound by reality, but one that is close to our daily lives, a world that we may all cross and wander into at times.
I feel that the process of making paintings and drawing out ideas in a notebook is a different time frame from the time I spend at work or in my social life, where I limit myself in many ways. I feel that it is similar to the time axis of living with my whole body, in which every moment of my childhood, thinking, feeling, moving my body, and adventures are all integrated into one. I would be happy if the viewers of my paintings would dive into their own time and play with the brushstrokes and the world within the paintings. (From a comment at his solo exhibition in 2021)

This is the season when we have many opportunities to think about our childhood memories and the relationship between ourselves and our surroundings. Why not spread your wings in the world of art as well?

Art Front Gallery also offers a wide variety of other artworks. （Further contact: contact@artfrontgallery.com ）