Tomio Koyama Gallery Tennoz is pleased to present Yuko Someya’s solo exhibition “I See You in the Wild Flowers.” This is the artist’s first solo exhibition in seven years, and centers on the presentation of her new works.
【About Yuko Someya and Her Works: Contemporary Bird-and-flower paintings with a Familiar Sense of Reality】
Yuko Someya is an artist who has developed a unique and new style of expression, intertwining familiar landscapes with memories from her own childhood, experiences of life changes, and fundamental aspects of life, such as death, birth, and nature. Her fantastical artworks, where various plants and animals coexist, could be described as contemporary renditions of the traditional bird-and-flower painting.
In her production process, Someya first meticulously sketches with a pencil to create outlines. She then traces these outlines onto Japanese paper (washi), applies color, and cuts out these shapes, layering them multiple times on the canvas to construct the composition. Finally, she completes the artwork by drawing with sharpened pencils or Chinese ink, thus giving rise to the world of the work.
Her works, which incorporate whitespace as if erasing time, and attempt to express sounds like the opening of flowers or the falling of petals, are lyrically crafted in a manner akin to writing a piece of poetry that lovingly depicts nature.
In the 2010s, Someya spent time focusing her attention and research on the technique of “Sujime-gaki,” a method used in the ink paintings of Jakuchu Ito. Someya further expanded her means of artistic expression by primarily employing this technique in her work.
The artist states as follows with regards to the production of her work.
“In my paintings, birds, butterflies, flowers, cobwebs, and water are symbolically captured and present. These are all materials for the things that I was passionate about making when I was a child. One of the things that I was “passionate about making as a child” are graves for insects. I felt that within this act coexisted a kind of insensitivity towards the fragility of life, and the certain ferocity that may occur when one’s mind is unprepared for the extraordinary nature of death. Despite having been young at the time, when I recognized this very insensitivity and ferocity, I was also made aware of the familiar yet unfathomable existence that was myself. From wild flowers to the wings of butterflies and birds that I had collected at the time, as well as insects caught in a spider’s web—what I eventually arrived at as a means to depict the fragility and small narratives of these ephemeral presences, was the technique of working with Japanese paper (washi), Chinese ink, pencil, and lithograph. Japanese paper becomes frayed at the edges when torn, the Chinese ink spreads freely as it desires, and the pencil traverses through space. The lithographic technique instills the work with a surreal sense of color.”
Yuko Someya
【About the Exhibition and the Works: The Strong Beauty and Fear of Nature, Mysterious Sensations Caused by Changes in Life】
Her new work, Neither Knowledge Nor Intention. depicts mountains with clouds, rain, and lightning, expressing the sensation of experiencing overwhelming nature, which in turn had instilled a sense of surprise within the body. Someya, who was born and raised in the reclaimed land of the Kanto Plain, contemplated what nature meant to people as they were exposed to its strong beauty and fear within their lives, in doing so, arrived at the title of this work.
A Person With Many Worries is a still-life painting from her “Tulpa Series.” Tulpa in Tibetan means “emanation,” representing a willful entity created by spiritual or mental power. After giving birth, Someya would feel a strong gaze while walking the usual route home, only to find nothing but the same tree when she turned her head to look in that direction.
Likewise, she felt the gaze elsewhere, only to find wild flowers. This artwork expresses this mysterious sensation of being watched by plants, and the ability of perceiving a kind of energy similar to that of humans.
For Someya, flowers are a presence that is far distant from “death.” This is informed by the fact that she finds the expression “withering” more beautiful than “dying” when describing flowers and plants.
Inheriting the tradition of historical Japanese expression and further intertwining it with her own life, Someya vividly depicts the blink of nature’s cycle of life and death through her keen sensibility and the hazy, gradient colors of her canvases.
We look forward to welcoming you to the exhibition.
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For press inquiries, please contact: press@tomiokoyamagallery.com
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