Artist Profile

Rieko Otake

Rieko Otake’s woodcarvings express such motifs as young girls, birds and deer and even while her work looks somewhat delicate and unstable at times, one senses a unique strength in its universal presence replete with grace. Otake consistently uses the wood of camphor, cypress, and katsura trees, working within a method of adding finishing touches to a foundation of non-colored wood. Approaching closer the works, one becomes aware of an unexpected vigor to the chisel marks. She is affected by the importance of the rhythm of the repeated carving motions: a sincere process of exchange as if the tree and one’s breathing might become joined together, so that the artwork appears as story replete with lyricism.

Rieko Otake was born in 1978 in Kanagawa Prefecture. In 2004 she graduated from Tokyo University of the Arts’ Graduate School of Fine Arts, majoring in sculpture, and completed her PhD in 2007. Her works have been collected in the Takahashi and JAPIGOZZI Collections. As well as exhibiting in the show “As Long As Rainbow Lasts” (Soka Art Center, Taipei, 2011), she has also held four solo exhibitions at Tomio Koyama Gallery.

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.

Yuko Someya

Yuko Someya was born in 1980 in Chiba. She completed her Master’s degree in printmaking at Tokyo University of Arts, the Department of Art, in 2006. She received awards for her work at Machida City Museum of Graphic Arts, Tokyo in 2004 and her works are now part of the museum collection. “I move my pencil as if I was spelling a word,” Someya says of her works, intricately drawing and coloring motifs such as flowers, birds, plants, and animals. The paintings often embrace generous blank spaces in which the motifs are given the sense of floating, releasing strong brightness as if to invite the viewers into the stories, and to continue them. Her specialized method using ink and distinctive transparency in color and texture created by layered washi paper are also attractive.