We are pleased to announce Solo Exhibition “Live through the backwoods” by the painter, Yusuke ABE. He is a young painter who just graduated from master’s course of art university; but has been deploying his activities with stoic production and powerful works at home and abroad, and has attracted people’s attention little by little. This exhibition is his first solo show after graduation.

The pop characters, that are full of feeling of stir as if to realize at once. Or the strange screens, that are generated by the bold construction such like; sticking trading cards or plastic products on the painting; gluing other canvases on a canvas. When we stand in front of ABE’s painting, At first these catchy elements attract our eyes. We can read his memory related to game culture or nature that he has communed with from childhood to now; or his original critic eyes and new presentation about form and style that are led by his honest research on painting and fine-art history.

Even if you enjoy only these elements, ABE’s works are sufficiently attractive. But beyond them, there is more different, indescribable something that propels him to create paintings.

For example, ABE says that: the insects, fishes and fictitious monsters that he adopts in his paintings are absolutely equivalent to a line that was drawn by a paintbrush casually. Insects in bush, fishes in water, monsters in the world of card or game. They come into existence in accordance with the environment of respective dwelling, and live. Since childhood, ABE has encountered those residents of other worlds through insect collecting, fishing or playing games. And he has been surprised at the existence of them that have life and environment that are distinct from himself, and attracted to them. And the interest evolves into self-awareness that he himself also lives in the limited environment, “world of human”; and that he is still not different from the residents.

When he was a high school student, he took oil paints for the first time, and drew a casual line on canvas. For ABE, The color line looked like living thing that was established and given life by the structure of the world where the line lives, namely the environment of “world of painting”. And that is still not different from the residents, too. This is an episode that describes his origin of incisive sense toward visual arts. In addition, paintings have not only such autonomous environment, but also evident traces of the artist. For him, paints and brushes may be the tools to access simultaneously both world like his alter ego, and completely different unknown territory. He has been absorbed in such ambiguity that painting has, and piled up production.

What does the word “Free” mean in the title of this exhibition? (Note: English metaphrase of the title is “To be free decisively”.) Of course, for him, that doesn’t mean the superficial elements such like sticking favorite things on the painting, or applying strange composition. Assuming that painting for ABE is a tool to grasp and seek both the world he lives and the other worlds other life live; the “Free” may be, for instance, burning his own life maximum in his own environment; while touching some worlds that exist in plural dimensions, and feeling the respective fate that we can’t get away from the each environment.

This exhibition will be composed of his newest series in that various techniques of his past works are included, and the important pieces that are selected from numerous works in the past few years. We highly appreciate that many people see the debut of the anticipated painter who faces painting most sincerely, desperately, and directly, at present.

ARTIST PROFILE: Yusuke Abe