Solo Exhibition Hideki KIMURA
- Celadon・Water Bird -

Celadon・Lake
100×143.5×109 cm
Celadon Ceramic, Wood 2024

8 May Wed. - 25 May Sat.2024

Hideki Kimura, a leading contemporary printmaker and a painter who has been active in Japan and overseas since the 1970s, will present his first solo exhibition in four years at imura art gallery.

Since making a spectacular debut as a print artist, Kimura has produced a stream of works fusing paintings and prints, using mainly the silkscreen method and various surfaces such as paper, glass, and canvas. In the 1980s he created the ‘Water Bird Series’ expressing images of water birds through silkscreen printing. Now, some 40 years later, the artist has returned to this series with a new choice of medium: ceramics.

The exhibition will feature nine new creations, including two three-dimensional mixed media works that surround a celadon water bird with ripple-pattern tiles—‘Celadon・Lake 翠い湖’ and ‘Celadon・ A Water Bird on the Pool’—and silkscreen prints using photographic images of celadon water birds. The ‘Celadon Water Birds and Ripple-pattern Tiles’ pieces, the central elements of this showing, were crafted through complex process in which Kimura created plastic water birds and rippled tiles using a 3D software and printer, manually shaped them, made plaster molds of them, and then made clay castings that he dried, bisque fired, and glaze fired. Be sure to savor these new works that embody Kimura’s affection for the Awata ware ceramics business that used to be run by his family.

―Artist Statement

On the Theme ‘Water Birds’
It started with a casual observation: the way my arms were positioned casually looked like a water bird. I believe it was in the early 1980s when I first noticed this. Subsequently, by having friends pose intentionally to resemble water birds and collecting numerous images, I began to consider the possibilities of creating something interest- ing with these observations.

From 1983 to 1986, I created about 30 pieces using this image of water birds, collectively referred to as the ‘Water Bird Series.’

The double imagery of arms and water birds can be interpreted as an image of ambiguity, but also as an analogy of indecision, vagueness, and indeterminacy.
The core of this work revolves around this elusive quality, poten- tially leading to feelings of incompleteness, unfinishedness, confusion, and frustration, which I found surpris- ingly interesting.

Initially, the creation of the ‘Water Bird Series’ was predicated on the use of photo stencil silkscreen techniques. Through the ‘Pencil’ (*1) and ‘Blinder’ (*2) series attempted in the 1970s, I concluded that images printed using photo stencil silkscreen possess an ambiguous existence. Enlarged to life-size, the ‘pencil’ image exists while fluctuating on the boundary between fiction and reality, neither material nor image, or perhaps both, celebrating its ambiguity. I called this unique presence ‘membranousness’ and have since been directing my creative efforts towards cultivating it.

The foundational concept behind the ‘Water Bird Series’ centers on crafting a dual sense of ambiguity, blending the equivocal nature of water birds with the ‘membranousness’ quality of silk, effectively doubling the ambigui- ty. This approach can be symbolically represented as ‘ambiguity multiplied by ambiguity equals X’. The ques- tion arises: what does X represent? Can this question even be answered? And if it can, might it not give rise to a wholly unprecedented scene or vision? These indistinct expectations became my motivation.

On the other hand, ambiguity equates to vagueness and indeterminacy. Could the square of ambiguity only lead to greater ambiguity and unimaginable confusion? It's a conceivable expectation.

Creating artwork is similar to architecture. There's a foundation, upon which a framework is placed, then walls are added, and finally, the interior and exterior are completed. There is a demand at each stage of the process for robust stability. However, what if ambiguity, or a lack of reliability, was inserted into one part of the creation process? At the very least, there would be a constant fear of collapse and disintegration.

The methodology of ‘ambiguity squared’ might only be fine for the construction of a castle in the sand or, at best, setting up a temporary scaffold. A valid concern, indeed. Yet, I found this prospect intriguing.

If the to-be-completed construction or artwork can only guarantee unexpected results, then a freedom is born within the production process. At the very least, freedom from restrictions on materials and scale can be expect- ed, and the creation site becomes a great experimental field. My intention amidst this chaos was a transversal development of the form of the work. Not stopping at the traditional form of printmaking but also transitioning to painting or canvases as supports and developing into three-dimensional images or installations.

The ‘Water Bird Series’ may be described as a cross-media examination of various aspects of thought in the midst of uncertainty, with ambiguous images and indeterminacy at its core. It started around 1983 but came to a temporary halt around 1986. After about a 40 year hiatus, I changed the medium to celadon ceramics, leading to this solo exhibition.

On a personal note, my grandfather was involved in the production of Awata ware ceramics in Kyoto during the Meiji and Taisho periods. His son, my father, worked in the trade of Awata ware and Kiyomizu ware. In essence, I am the son of a pottery family. Although I spent my life mostly disconnected from ceramics after entering art school, I've found myself reflecting more on my father, who I lost at the age of six, and have felt a growing desire to create something befitting the son of a pottery family. One reason for using the words ‘Reunion’ and ‘Bond’ in the title of the series was to imply the meaning of family bonds. Another was my curiosity about whether it's possible to find a connection between my work from 1986 and 2024.

Celadon ceramics are beautiful in their own right, unquestionably so. I warmly invite you to view the exhibition and appreciate your interest in experiencing it.

Hideki KIMURA

－Pipe dream－ KG+PICK UP
Akiyoshi MIYAKE

16 Apr.Tue.- 28 Apr.Sun.2024

I am not comfortable expressing myself through photography. In Szakowski’s style, I wish to be a “window” photographer. When taking street snapshots, I try to eliminate subjectivity as much as possible and capture the intermingling of people in the city. However, it is inevitable that personal preferences will play a role. Therefore, I thought that AI could help us minimize subjectivity.
AI learns from a vast amount of images and text, derives prompts from the photos I have taken, and generates new images. The training data is collected from the Internet, and is a hodgepodge of not only famous paintings and photographs, but also those uploaded by Internet users on a daily basis in the hope that they will be “liked.”
These may not be recognized as “photographs,” but they may be an extension of the history of photography’s expansion of its meaning.

showcase #12
“Whereabouts of photographic reality”
curated by minoru shimizu
ARTISTS：Hana Sawada, Hiroshi Tanihira

Hana Sawada

Hiroshi Tanihira

12 Apr.Fri.– 12 May Sun.2024
open on Fri., Sat., & Sun.12:00-18:00
appointments are available on weekdays

From April 12th, eN arts will be presenting “Showcase #12,” a group exhibition specializing in photography and video curated by Professor Minoru Shimizu. As its title suggests, this exhibition provides a true “showcase” for contemporary young photographers and video artists. With the first Showcase having been presented in 2012, this year’s exhibition marks its 12th consecutive year. This year Mr. Shimizu has selected two rising artists to present their works at “Showcase#12” exhibition: Hana Sawada and Hiroshi Tanihira.

This year, as well, eN arts will be participating in KYOTOGRAPHIE2024, the month-long international photography festival in Kyoto, as a KG+ for Collectors this year. Please refer to https://kgplus.kyotographie.jp for details. The theme of KYOTOGRAPHIE2024 is “‘SOURCE’ – The source is the beginning, the beginning, and the origin of all things.”

At showcase #12, we invite you to come and explore the fate of reality in photographic and video works…Is photography the source or reality the source?

eN arts looks forward to your visit.

eN arts

showcase #12 curated by Minoru Shimizu
Whereabouts of photographic reality

The 12th Showcase 2024 features Hiroshi Tanihira (b.1982, first appearance) whose surprisingly detailed and dense graphite drawings have attracted attention, and Hana Sawada (b.1990, second appearance since 2018) who, since her Canon New Century of Photography Award 2017(specially mentioned by Sandra Phillips), has been active in a number of exhibitions.

In Tanihira’s works a shermanictic figure is drawn in finest hard-edge lines with extreme richness of details. Since its emergence photography has visualized the invisible one after another, such as photographs of farthest nature and universe, as scientific or sport photographs capturing the one-thousandth instant, or those of ectoplasms and ghosts. In the end we could say, that the “reality” we know, be it visible or invisible, has come to consist of nothing but ordinary photographs. Reality is photographic! You would not call it “real” unless I draw it in exactly photographic style … this was/is an ironical core of the Superrealism which firstly emerged in the 1970’s and is still found in popular media such as YouTube.

Contrary to this, Tanihira’s pencil pursues something un-photographable, something that must lie beyond the photographic “reality”. Therefore, the essence of his works, the beautiful gray shine expressed in extremely fine, almost engraved lines, cannot be photographed. Please do not fail to look at the originals.

Now, a photograph is always a photograph of “something”, that is, the referent of photography, which has been regarded as something real outside of photography. The objects of Sawada’s works are digital images found in the internet. These are all digitally scanned, so to speak vacuum-packed images. Did/Does such ”thing” really exist, though? Here the artist tries to trace them back to their referents, which have once existed in reality, as she cuts the packed images open, uses digital methods and reconstructs the flattened images to three-dimensional objects.

It is not that Sawada would believe in “something”’ real existence. In her playful manipulations and humorous deployments of images, she rather expresses a kind of reality of recent digital images, which have totally broken with reality that has ever been.

April, 2024. Minoru Shimizu

I am awfully drawn to trifling things that are largely overlooked. For example, something small that happens to be included in a photograph. A sound, that sounds like speech, that I didn’t catch. My own shape, reflected in the monitor when I watch a movie. Or what “to understand” has in common with “to assume.” At those moments, I stop and look closely; that is where my work begins.

Images and words are surprisingly vague and slippery. Meaning is formed by the imagination, and accepted, lead there by the knowledge and experience of the person who encountered that trifling thing.

Imagination is like putty, natural, convenient, and easy to use to connect and fill in bumps and holes. Even if, for example, the filling in is rather crude and forced, one does not recognize that.

Arbitrarily connecting images and words, with imagination between them, seems perfectly natural behavior, but briefly stopping that movement or going too far with it makes their connections momentarily clear. When that happens, the distortions and gaps, the slips and deviations, that existed in the images and words are exposed. At the same time, we devote our consciousness to our imagination, to fill in those flaws. (For example, even if imagination immediately catches up and becomes familiar.)

Hana Sawada

The person depicted in the work is myself dressed as a fictional character I call Bush　whacker, and the scenery in the background is the mountains and the sea within a few kilometers radius of where I live. To explain what a Bush whacker is, the term was coined to refer to a person who whacks President George W. Bush, who had started the Iraq War the year before, in 2004, when the original video work for this film was created. Although the word Bush whacker may suggest an anti-war message, it is not so much a social theme as it is a one, and was born out of the disquieting atmosphere felt by everyone at the time. The clothes of the Bush whacker are the same as the everyday clothes of the so-called working class, with the hope that it is the people who will change power and society.Allegorical motifs sometimes limit the meaning of a work, but I description them because I needed them to understand the work.

On the other hand, Bush whacker’s masks are also influenced by Japanese culture, especially by visiting deity, such as the use of sakaki in Shinto rituals. And it is interesting to note that there are events similar to in visiting deity various parts of the world. As the international situation continues to worsen, the basis of the production is an exploration of how to remain Japanese in the world and how one can relate to the world oneself.

Hiroshi Tanihira

UCHIDA Seira Exhibition

16 Apr.Tue.– 27 Apr.Sat.2024

TACHIBANA Hikaru Exhibition

30 Apr.Tue.– 11 May Sat.2024

KG+
Hayato Nishimura Exhibition
"Mounds 2023-24"

Uehasu Village Tomb No.76
（Isezaki city,Gunma pref.)

13 Apr.Sat. - 28 Apr.Sun.2024

This series is intended to find the way humans live on the layers of the ages, focusing on the ancient burial mounds (called Kofun in Japanese) that exist in the landscape while being irrelevant to the lives of modern people. The ancient burial mounds were built in East Asia, including Japan, as graves where persons in authority sleep a dozen centuries ago. There are many mounds that have been damaged in ways that do not preserve dignity, or are buried in cities and are unable to keep quiet in the urbanization in later generations, especially in modern times. Although the value as a cultural heritage has been recognized and has been the subject of protection and conservation in recent years, there is no buffer between the mounds and the houses, public facilities or public infrastructure due to the already advanced urbanization. The landscape has a strange aspect in which human activities are separated by time and consciousness.（Hayato Nishimura)

SPECIAL EXHIBITIONS
Kyoto City University of Arts Relocation
Commemorative Program
Floating and Flowing:
For A New Ecosystem around KCUA

20 Apr.Sat.– 9 Jun.Sun.2024

Artists：Suujin Sukusuku Centre (Makiko Yamamoto), Takasegawa Monitoring Club,
Yuka Mori,Moemi Sasaki

Yasuhiro Fujiwara
"Cover"

22 Mar.Fri.– 12 May Sun.2024
Reception：3.22 (fri) 17:00-19:00
opening hours：12:00 - 18:00
closed on Mon, Tue and National holidays, 7th April

〈1F〉
Emiko Furuno Exhibition

16 Apr.Tue.- 21 Apr.Sun.2024

〈2F〉
Streets of Paris KAI Fusayoshi

16 Apr.Tue.- 21 Apr.Sun.2024

KAI Fusayoshi
He was born in 1949 in Oita City. His interest in photography began when he was 11 years old. In 1968, He entered Doshisha University in Kyoto and was quickly expelled as he became involved in the anti-war movement. In 1972, along with folk singer, poet and therapist friends, he opened the cafe Honyarado in Kyoto. In 1978, he was invited to hold an exhibition at The Evergreen State College in WA, U.S.A. In 1985, he opened the bar Hachimonjiya in Kyoto. KAI has held over 100 individual exhibitions throughout the world. He published over 40 photo collection and authored books. In 2015 Honyarado burned down in the fire which destroyed a huge quantity of negatives and prints.
In 2009, he received the 22nd Kyoto Fine Arts and Culture Award. In 2014, received the 2014 SNBA (Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts) Paris “Jean Larivière Award”. In 2023, received the 41st Kyoto Prefecture Cultural Award, Distinguished Service Award.
https://kaifusayoshi.com

〈1F〉
Mamiko Egawa Exhibition

23 Apr.Tue.- 28 Apr.Sun.2024

〈Back Yard〉
Yasuaki Kuzumoto

9 Jan.Tue.– 23 June.Sun.2024

I make sculpture by original technique. The technique is to act material from both human artificiality and natural phenomenon. Other works are installation used salvaged objects and art event promotion in “Satoyama” area. Through their works, I think about relationship of human and the outside world. In the process of creating artwork, materials acquire unique forms and patterns, textures through the action of natural phenomena. They may suggest to us the existence of a world that is invisible to our human eyes. Through the artworks, I want the viewer to direct their curiosity and imagination to the things that exist around us as a matter of course, and to the body that perceives them. It is also to be aware of our human-oriented perspective.

Tomoko Hayashi
"and the world is mud."

30 Mar.Sat.– 9 Jun.Sun.2024

Hayashi Yuki
we stare at the light

13 Apr.Sat. – 12 May Sun.2024

Permanent exhibition

Permanent exhibitions are held irregularly.

For inquiries regarding exhibitions and works,
please contact us.
GALLERY TOMO

SAMATA Kazuki solo exhibition
Your Dream About?

16 Apr.Tue.– 21 Apr.Sun.2024

＜comcept＞

I'm an artist and a professional disc golf athlete.
I'm looking for sponsors.
Sponsors can be involved in every decision I make as an athlete.
When you and I make a contract, your “will” will be inherited by me.

SAMATA Kazuki

CHO Ryota solo exhibition
Alley tale of the white ancient city

Ancient Mikines
2023

23 Apr.Tue.– 28 Apr.Sun.2024

CHO Ryota (b.1991, Kyoto pref, lives and works in Kansai) is an artist who examines different cultures through woodblock prints carved in a dramatic style.
2020: Completed the doctoral program without a doctoral degree of Arts program at Kyoto Seika University.

NAKAGIRI Satomi solo exhibition
imitate a real

imitation #1

30 Apr.Tue.– 5 May Sun.2024

NAKAGIRI Satomi (b.1995, lives and works in Okayama pref) is an artist who scratches, colors, and brings out "transitions" in single silkscreened images of the sea.
She earned her master's degree in a printing course at Kyoto city University of the Arts.

〈1F・2F〉
YORIGAMI Munemi・
YORIGAMI Chieko Exhibition

11 Apr.Thu.– 21 Apr.Sun.2024

〈1F〉
Chen Yicheng Exhibition
Time’s Shadow

23 Apr.Tue.– 28 Apr.Sun.2024

〈2F〉
YOSHIDA Makiko Exhibition

23 Apr.Tue.– 28 Apr.Sun.2024

MASARU KUROSE
to Fluid painting

6 Apr.Sat.– 28 Apr.Sun.2024

KG+
Anna Hayat and Slava Pirsky
“Existence”

”Doll" 2023
Polaroid photography
print on paper, 84 x 105 cm

13 Apr.Sat.- 28 Apr.Sun.2024
(Closed on Monday) 11:00-18:00

“Gallery G-77 presents an exhibition titled “Existence” by Israeli photographers Anna Hayat and Slava Pirsky as part of the program KG+ (Kyotographie 2024).

Through large-format black-and-white Polaroid photographs taken both inside and outside the studio, they explore themes of trauma, self-sacrifice, and the fragility of life in an Israeli society deeply affected by ongoing war and terrorism. Their work moves away from strict documentary representation and constructs figurative images that resonate with current events. Unified by a consistent style and theme, the exhibition includes the main series ``My Personal Jesus,'' which combines Renaissance aesthetics with contemporary photography. In the wake of the October 7th terrorist attacks, artists have created new works that reflect a direct approach, evoking empathy and reflection. Experimenting with materials and techniques, they create photographs that look like historical artifacts, conveying the passage of time and adding an intriguing layer to the viewer's experience.

Kimiyo Mishima Exhibition

Kimiyo Mishima, Work2003 (Newspaper)
2001 - 03
Slag of daily life garbage, clay
Right：H60 × W120 × D91cm
Left：H89 × W97 × D141 cm
Image provided・photo:Kimiyo Mishima

Work2003 (Newspaper)details
photo：Yuji Imamura

15 Feb.Thu. – 7 May Tue.2024

Enrico Isamu Oyama exhibition
"Scale / Effect"

Artwork ©Enrico Isamu Oyama / EIOS

5 Apr.Fri.– 23 Apr.Tue.2024

Oscar Oiwa exhibition
［Light Shop］

《Light Shop 3》2023 Oil on canvas/122×148 cm

26 Apr.Fri.– 15 May Wed.2024

Light Shop
My daily life is busy, but I often cook to refresh my mind. Living in New York, dining out means large portions, salty dishes, and high prices (even ramen can cost over 3,000 yen). Considering my health, I often cook at home and prioritize drinking plenty of water. On weekdays, I prepare meals that take no more than 40 minutes, but on weekends, I might spend around an hour cooking. In my younger days, I even cooked a chicken that I raised myself, and there were times when I prepared food for up to 20 people. As for what I cook, it's "anything."
On weekdays, I ensure I get seven hours of sleep and occasionally go to the gym. I believe in maintaining physical health by consuming food and being mindful of what I eat. However, to sustain health, I also think it's essential to "consume" good things mentally, regardless of the time. So, I wondered what it would be like to shape mental food. I imagined it to be something like formless light, smoke, or a faint glow.
In this world, there are many shops selling physical food, but few sell mental food. The average modern person may not have the luxury of caring for their mental well-being until it's too late. Considering this, there are also many who cannot enjoy physical food. In this Light Shop series, I envisioned what would happen if we started selling this mental food.

Oscar Oiwa

Kazuto Imura exhibition

《wall-ordered horizon #2》
H500mm×W500mm×D100mm
2024（photo by Kenryou Gu）

27 Apr.Sat.– 14 May Tue.2024