Artist Profile

Stephan Balkenhol

Stephan Balkenhol was born in 1957 in Hesse, Germany. From 1976 he studied at the Hamburg School of Fine Arts where artists including Nam June Paik and Sigmar Polke had taught at the time, and received the tutorship of renowned minimalist sculptor Ulrich Rückriem.

Balkenhol has presented works in numerous exhibitions internationally, and his first solo exhibition in Japan, “Stephan Balkenhol: Skulpturen und Reliefs” held in 2005 at the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Osaka, and Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, received significant recognition and acclaim.

His major solo exhibitions include Museé de Grenoble (France, 2010), Deichtorhallen Hamburg (Germany, 2008), Sprengel Museum (Hannover, Germany, 2003), Saatchi Gallery (London, UK, 1996), The Hirshhorn Museum (Washington DC, 1995) , Neue Nationalgalerie (Berlin, Germany, 1994).


His major group exhibitions include “1995 Carnegie International” (Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA, 1995), “Doubletake” Hayward Gallery, London, UK, 1992 [toured to Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, Austria]
, 
”Post Human” FAE Musée d’Art Contemporain, [toured to Castello di Rivoli, Turin, Italy / Deste Foundation for Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece / Deichtorhallen, Hamburg, Germany] 
, 
”Possible Worlds: Sculpture from Europe” (ICA and Serpentine Gallery, London, UK
, 1990), “Skulptur Projekt in Münster” (Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, Münster, Germany, 1987).

Balkenhol’s works are housed in the collections of numerous museums throughout the world including Art Institute of Chicago (USA), Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (USA), The Broad Art Foundation (USA), Los Angeles County Museum of Art (USA), Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst (Germany), Kunstmuseum Bonn (Germany), Museum für Moderne Kunst (Germany), The National Museum of Art, Osaka (Japan), The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (Japan).

Atsushi Fukui

Atsushi Fukui was born in 1966 in Aichi prefecture. In 1989, he completed his B.A. in oil painting at Tokyo University of the Arts. He is currently based in Yamanashi prefecture.

His major solo exhibitions include “air” (2016, yu-un, Tokyo) and “Council of Backpacking” (2015, ROPPONGI HILLS A/D GALLERY, Tokyo). His first show at Tomio Koyama Gallery was the group exhibition “morning glory” curated by Yoshitomo Nara (Tokyo, Japan, 2002). Thereafter, he held 6 solo exhibitions at Tomio Koyama Gallery.
Fukui’s major group exhibitions include “TAKAHASHI COLLECTION Mindfulness!” (2013, Kirishima Open-Air Museum, Kagoshima, Japan [touring Sapporo Art Museum, Hokkaido, Japan]) “ORANGE SKY” (2011, RH Gallery, New York), “Punkt Art 2011 David Sylvian-in cooperation with Atsushi Fukui uncommon deities” (2011, Sorlandets Kunstmuseum, Kristiansand, Norway), “convolvulus: Atsushi Fukui / Hideaki Kawashima” (2009, Michael Ku Gallery, Taipei), “The Masked Portrait” (2008, Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York), “ROPPONGI CROSSING” (2004, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo). His works have been included in the public collections of The Olbricht Collection (Germany), The JAPIGOZZI Collection (US/ Switzerland), The Takahashi Collection (Japan) and The Japan Foundation (Japan).

Masahiko Kuwahara

Masahiko Kuwahara started exhibiting his work in the 1980s. He has consistently expressed a sense of absurdity with regard to scenery and humanity being changed by modernization. Inorganic buildings and sceneries created by Japan’s economic prosperity during the 1960s and 70s, dolls and toys that were consumed and abandoned to anonymity, and uncanny creatures living by polluted water, are the primary scenery in which Kuwahara himself grew up. He depicts their sadness in light and humorous ways, assimilated with pale color tones and blurred outlines, suggesting our contemporary feelings of fleeting emptiness, dullness, and loneliness, yet also enabling us to sense a mysterious kind of happiness.

Born in Tokyo in 1959. He has held nine solo exhibitions with Tomio Koyama Gallery: “Abandoned Child” (1997), “View” (1999), “Life and Pus” (2001), “Land Development” (2005), “In the End of Summer” (2007), “Window” (2008), “Sweet and Desserts” (2010), “Only in Dream” (2012), and “Bright Days” (2015). He has also hold two solo exhibitions at Richard Heller Gallery in Santa Monica, the United States, in 2001 and 2008.

His major group exhibitions include “TOKYO POP” (Hiratsuka Museum of Art, Kanagawa, 1996), “The Japanese Experience – Inevitable” (Ursula Blickle Stiftung Foundation, Kraichtal, Germany, 2002; traveled to Museum der Moderne, Salzburg, Austria in 2004), “POPjack: Warhol to Murakami” (Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver, 2002), “Japan Pop” (Helsinki City Art Museum, Helsinki, 2005), “Portrait Session” (NADiff, Tokyo / Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Hiroshima, 2007) and “Pathos and Small Narratives” (Gana Art Center, Seoul, Korea, 2011).

Kishio Suga

Kishio Suga was born in Morioka city, Iwate Prefecture in 1944. In 1968 he graduated from the Department of Painting at Tama Art University, and served as a central member of the art movement Mono-ha that took place from the late 1960s to the 1970s. For over 50 years since, Suga has continued to pursue a consistent philosophy and actively develop his artistic practice, paving his own unique path as one of the leading figures of Postwar Japanese art in our times. Even in recent years when the reevaluation of Mono-ha has been gaining much international recognition, he persists in further deepening his contemplation, with his unfaltering passion and enthusiasm for his practice serving to define the presentness of his work.

Since his first solo exhibition in 1968, Suga has presented work on over 400 occasions in numerous exhibitions both within Japan and abroad. Recent years in particular have seen remarkable developments and achievements in his career. In 2016 he held solo exhibitions at Pirelli Foundation’s HangarBiocca in Milan and Dia: Chelsea New York, in addition to a two-person exhibition with Karla Black at The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh. He was selected for the 57th Venice Biennale, “VIVA ARTE VIVA” in 2017, receiving high acclaim for Law of Situation in which he recreated of one of his early representative works in the form of an installation floating on water. In that same year Suga participated in the group exhibition “Japanorama: New Vision of JAPAN from 1970,”curated by Yuko Hasegawa that was held at the Centre Pompidou-Metz in France.

Suga’s works are also housed in numerous prominent museums throughout the world including the Centre Pompidou, Dia: Chelsea, the Tate Modern, Dallas Museum of Art, M+, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo.

https://www.kishiosuga.com/

Hiroshi Sugito

Hiroshi Sugito was born in 1970 in Aichi prefecture, Japan. He graduated from the Department of Japanese Painting, Faculty of Arts, Aichi Prefectural College of Arts in 1992. He is currently Associate Professor of the Department of Painting, Faculty of Fine Arts, Tokyo University of the Arts. He has exhibited extensively both in Japan and internationally since the 1990s. His major solo exhibitions include “FOCUS” (Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas, USA, 2006), “prime and foundation” (Miyagi Museum of Art, Miyagi, Japan, 2015), “frame and refrain” (Musée Bernard Buffet, Shizuoka, Japan, 2015), ”particles and release” (Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, Aichi, Japan, 2016), and “Hiroshi Sugito module or lacuna” (Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, 2017). He has also held eight solo exhibitions at Mark Foxx Gallery in Los Angeles.
His Significant group exhibitions include “Winter Garden：The Exploration of the Micropop Imagination in Contemporary Japanese Art” (curated by Midori Matsui, Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Japan, 2009; traveled to Japanisches Kulturinstitut, Cologne, Germany, 2009 / The Japan Foundation, Tronto, Tronto, Canada, 2010 / Galeri’a Arnold Belkin, Museo Universitario del Chopo、Mexico City, Mexico, 2011), “Garden of painting – Japanese Art of the 00s” (The National Museum of Art, Osaka, Japan, 2010), and “Logical Emotion – Contemporary Art from Japan” (Museum Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich, Switzerland, 2014; traveled to Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow MOCAK, Krakow, Poland, 2015 / Kunstmuseum Moritzburg Halle (Saale), Halle, Germany, 2015) among many others.