Exhibition/event has ended.
Atsushi Kaga “It Always Comes; a Solace in the cat.”
Maho Kubota Gallery
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Artists
Atsushi Kaga
Atsushi Kaga spent his teenage years in a commuter town typical of the kind that can be found in the suburbs around Tokyo. He would collect stickers and cards, play video games with friends, and watch as many rental videos as he could of Western movies. On the way home from school, he would find himself dropping by convenience stores and reading a wide variety of manga comics. And, the following day, he would go to school and do it all over again. Then, as a young man desiring to escape the everyday life of the town of his birth, Kaga went to Ireland. He originally wanted to pursue a career in film, but he was late in submitting his university entrance application, and ended up entering the National College of Art and Design (NCAD). He majored in painting in his second year, and after graduating from university, he held his first solo exhibition at Mother’s Tankstation, a gallery that opened in Dublin that year. Kaga’s painterly language, fostered by his life in the Tokyo suburbs and Japanese subculture, as well as his rich worldview, which incorporates a mixture of art history, philosophy, and Celtic culture that he studied in Ireland, make his art truly unique. His surreal paintings, depicting unique characters like his bunnies and his bear, became a hit, bringing an increasing number of opportunities for him to present his work. For eleven years, from 2007 when he held his first solo exhibition in Dublin, until 2018 when he finally debuted in Japan, Kaga held a series of successful exhibitions at venues in cities such as São Paulo, New York, Berlin, Miami, and Hong Kong, but none in his home country.
This solo exhibition, the second Atsushi Kaga solo exhibition at Maho Kubota Gallery following the artist’s first show here in 2018, clearly reflects the artist’s experience of the past year and a half, including his Tony O’Malley Residency in Kilkenny, Ireland, where he spent last year. As was the case with many other artists, with everyone separated from society during the pandemic, Kaga spent a year on his own looking inwards. He has clearly broken new ground with this group of work, earnestly facing his inner longing to paint throughout the fulfilling time spent in Kilkenny, resulting in work that feels as if he were channeling the artists of Edo Era Kyoto and the masters of Western painting.
This spring, Kaga once again set up an atelier in Kyoto, and in preparation for this exhibition painted work dealing with major themes as never before. The characters depicting anthropomorphized animals like rabbits, bears, and cats are still present in almost all of the works, but it feels as if they now appear as anthropomorphized ideas or messengers, rather than simply anthropomorphized characters. In his paintings, viewers can see an unmoving fox with eyes closed, as if it were dead, a cat looking silently towards the viewer, a lily illuminated by the moon, vegetables in many different colors, and the cat called Whitesocks that visited Kaga’s atelier in Kilkenny every day. A kind of spiritual ambience permeates throughout, creating a world that unfolds like a daydream in which an invisible door opens on the side away from reality, like a spiraling timeline of memory and loss, rebirth and hope, repeatedly appearing, and then fading away.
This exhibition consists of about eight pieces on canvas painted in Kilkenny, Ireland, and Kyoto, Japan, more than twenty small pieces, and two videos.
This solo exhibition, the second Atsushi Kaga solo exhibition at Maho Kubota Gallery following the artist’s first show here in 2018, clearly reflects the artist’s experience of the past year and a half, including his Tony O’Malley Residency in Kilkenny, Ireland, where he spent last year. As was the case with many other artists, with everyone separated from society during the pandemic, Kaga spent a year on his own looking inwards. He has clearly broken new ground with this group of work, earnestly facing his inner longing to paint throughout the fulfilling time spent in Kilkenny, resulting in work that feels as if he were channeling the artists of Edo Era Kyoto and the masters of Western painting.
This spring, Kaga once again set up an atelier in Kyoto, and in preparation for this exhibition painted work dealing with major themes as never before. The characters depicting anthropomorphized animals like rabbits, bears, and cats are still present in almost all of the works, but it feels as if they now appear as anthropomorphized ideas or messengers, rather than simply anthropomorphized characters. In his paintings, viewers can see an unmoving fox with eyes closed, as if it were dead, a cat looking silently towards the viewer, a lily illuminated by the moon, vegetables in many different colors, and the cat called Whitesocks that visited Kaga’s atelier in Kilkenny every day. A kind of spiritual ambience permeates throughout, creating a world that unfolds like a daydream in which an invisible door opens on the side away from reality, like a spiraling timeline of memory and loss, rebirth and hope, repeatedly appearing, and then fading away.
This exhibition consists of about eight pieces on canvas painted in Kilkenny, Ireland, and Kyoto, Japan, more than twenty small pieces, and two videos.
Schedule | Sep 10 (Fri) 2021-Oct 9 (Sat) 2021 Opening Hours Information
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| Fee | Free | ||||
| Website | https://www.mahokubota.com/en/exhibitions/3287/ | ||||
| Venue | Maho Kubota Gallery http://www.mahokubota.com/en/ | ||||
| Location | 1F, 2-4-7 Jingumae, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo 150-0001 | ||||
| Access | 6 minute walk from exit 2 at Gaienmae Station on the Ginza line, 11 minute walk from exit A2 at Omotesando Station on the Ginza, Hanzomon and Chiyoda lines. | ||||
| Phone | 03-6434-7716 | ||||
| Related images | Click on the image to enlarge it |
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