Wanderers in M City
Main Gallery Area Artist
Artist Information
Satoshi Kikuya
1989 Born in Hokkaido
2013 Graduated from Kanazawa College of Art,M.F.A.,Oil Painting
2015 “The 18th Exhibition of the Taro Okamoto Award for Contemporary Art” Taro Okamoto Museum of ART,Kawasaki（Kanagawa,Japan)
2016 “Shell Art Award Artists Selection (SAS) 2016” The National Art Center（Tokyo,Japan)
2017 “Solo show -Indoor landscape-” CRISPY EGG Gallery (Kanagawa,Japan)
2017 “VOCA2017” The Ueno Royal Museum (Tokyo,Japan)
2018 “Solo show -Play a role-” Sojiro Contemporary Art Gallery (Hyogo,Japan)
In 2007, taking advantage of entering an art university, I traded my digital paint environment for an easel, canvas, and hog brush. Since then, I’ve been putting oil on canvas to create paintings. Through changing styles—like copy-paste collages, tracing snapshots of flowers, cats, and friends, and homages to Japanese modern Western-style painting as a reconsideration of my roots—I am currently constructing surrealistic compositions that incorporate the essences of each style, while I explore the meaning and significance of working in oil painting in the East Asian island country of Japan today.
[Comment by Selector]
In recent years, Satoshi Kikuya, based in Kanazawa, Ishikawa Prefecture, has focused his attention on the Japanese expression of modern Western painting, and has been working with the theme of transforming them into contemporary paintings. Expression through oil painting’s rich textures and distinctively melancholy use of color may seem heavy, but as its motifs are interpreted and reconstructed through Kikuya’s contemporary perspective, they give a bit of pop impression. With his work before our eyes, we are inverted by the contrastive natures coexisting on the canvas, and are drawn into the marvelous world of these paintings. It will be the opportunity to see Kikuya’s approach to express his own fascinating world through painting as well as shining a light on Western painting in Japan once again.