8/ ART GALLERY/ Tomio Koyama Gallery is pleased to present When Their Presence is Soon to be Heard, a solo exhibition of works by Yoshino Masui.
Yoshino Masui’s oeuvre comprises delicate and intricately detailed watercolors that are depicted through applying a base coat of watercolor, which is then later revisited and developed with numerous layers of paint. Within such works, a unique sense of texture is created by the unexpected effect caused by blurs and smudges of the paints, in combination with the intentional and elaborately painted lines. Animals including cats, horses, and birds which Masui has continued to observe as presences familiar to her overlap with the backdrop of the works, and are painted in a manner reminiscent of mythical creatures. For this exhibition, she has created new works in which horses are simply positioned and depicted within the space of the picture plane. As could be interpreted from the title, When Their Presence is Soon to be Heard, perhaps the works serve to indicate a new beginning, or something within the artist that is about to be born. The exhibition that marks Masui’s first solo exhibition at Tomio Koyama Gallery in two years, features a selection of old works and new works by the artist who through her practice, constantly continues to both engage in a dialogue and confront her very own self.

＜Artist Statement＞
In the company that I joined when I was 28 years old, after four years or so of living a hermit life, all my faults were considered a virtue. The world is full of people who ignore the rules, and feel no pain or remorse in inconveniencing others. What happened to that mighty attitude from the other day? Do you not realize that it’s you all who are weird?
What had indeed become of those days I had confronted in the past?
I gained a world that I no longer had a need to depict. At the same time, a peculiar game of tactics had incurred between myself and that person who was the very product of “these days I had confronted.”
That person doesn’t allow me to say “I can no longer paint.” It is as if some form of strength that in fact has no power at all, is randomly making its presence heard.
The paintings manifest upon the resonance and respective rate of intervention between that person and myself. The extent of this fluctuation is not fixed, and the works roll within the midst of this ever-shifting oscillation.

—Yoshino Masui

http://www.hikarie8.com/artgallery/2018/12/yoshino-masui.shtml