TAB Event - Yutaka Mukoyama "Dissolved Oxygen in Seawater"

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At Galerie Tokyo Humanité
Media: Painting, Sculpture

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Yutaka Mukoyama was born in Osaka in 1984. He held his first solo exhibition in 2005 while still a student at Takaratsuka University of Art and Design as part of Humanite Lab, an exhibition series conceived to introduce the work of young artists. Mukoyama has attracted much attention for his finely detailed drawings of small tropical fish and eels rendered separately in head and tail parts, no larger than a fingertip, on large canvases ranging from no. 100-120. Mukoyama also exhibited work at the Asian Young Artists in Heyri 2007 exhibition held in Korea last year.

Mukoyama's choice of motifs in recent years often includes eels, octopuses, sea fireflies and other marine creatures. As a first step to producing his work, he typically researches his chosen creature using dictionaries and the Internet, after which he actually rears the animal in question, the nurturing of which accompanies the drawing in progress. For instance, although a sea firefly is only the size of a sesame seed, Mukoyama observed it using a microscope, and dissected it in order to research the structure of its body and internal organs and draw them on a canvas.

Although these investigations result in photorealistic renderings of living creatures almost entirely devoid of authorial intention, with the hard objectivity of an illustrated encyclopedia or bestiary, they also have something of a unique, almost human sense of familiarity and sadness to them.

This exhibition is Mukoyama's first solo one in 3 years, featuring about 10 works, mostly large-scale oil paintings measuring 2.5x2.5m, as well as some wooden sculptures.

[Image: "Sea-firefly" (2007) oil on canvas, 112.0 x 145.5cm]

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