EXHIBITIONS

The Recontextualization of a Group of Works of Different Materials and the Pursuit of Their Essence

Tokyo International Gallery Co., Ltd. (Tennozu, Shinagawa) is proud to announce that it will hold a group exhibition of the works of three up-and-coming young artists, Yuka Numata, Miki Ishiyama, and Valentin Dommanget. The title of the exhibition is “How to Address ILLUSION.”

The distortion and character of a work brought about by illusion differs according to the eye of the beholder. Although the materials and artistic processes of these three artists may differ, there is a mutual interaction in the way in which the illusion created by the viewer’s eyes leads the viewer to the true nature of those works. In this three-person exhibition, the cross-reactions between the artists will be explored in an experimental way in the Gallery’s spaces, in an endeavor to recontextualize the works and pursue the true nature of art itself as it burns into the minds of the viewers.

Yuka Numata uses plastic beads fused together with an iron to create single motifs. Her works plunge the viewer into an illusion that seems to shift between the two-dimensional and the three-dimensional. From a distance, they look just like a painting, but when viewed up close, they are quite obviously semi-three-dimensional pieces formed by those beads. The true nature of those works may be a fantasy that projects a real society that is a long way from what our eyes perceive.

Miki Ishiyama is an artist whose oil paintings have a pure sense of motion. Her large, richly-colored paintings bring to the fore the mysterious emotions that lay dormant deep within us. The various elements painted on the canvas twist and twine with each other, appearing to change shape when gazed at over time. This exhibition will present Ishiyama’s worldview by showing several of her paintings, including some large new pieces.

Valentin Dommanget’s art involves creating images on a computer, which are then output by lenticular printing. A feature of these lenticular prints is that the image changes depending on where the viewer is standing. The artist’s intention is that viewers gauge their own sense of distance from the work as they move back and forth around it. Dommanget’s drawings, which incorporate Japan’s paper marbling techniques to create vibrant and contemporary mineral patterns on the canvas, seem like a symbol of contemporary society that leaps out from the conventionally flat domain.

The space that is created by the harmony of these three artists’ works lies in the “in-between” of the illusions that our sight creates. We hope that visitors to this exhibition will actively explore ways of addressing those illusions.