▲ Cherry Blosson, Acrylic on canvas, 53x53cm, 2023 ⓒ Okumura Aka

Three Japanese artists will hold an exhibition, 'See You On The Other Side', in Seoul, South Korea.

Wada Chizu, Aka Okumura, and Nakazawa Ryuji will hold an exhibition at the Vivian Choi Gallery in Gangnam-gu, Seoul, from Feb. 20 to Mar. 23.

The exhibition features works that modernize motifs from Japanese classical art, such as Ukiyo-e prints, an art style popular in Japan in the 18th century, or developed into their unique style inspired by Japanese pop culture Manga, Western impressionism, and pop art.

In modern society, the illusion of escape from reality is often related to distancing from reality or indulging in the inner world. For the young generation of Japan born after the 1980s, this introverted escapism was used as a means of resistance to Japan's stubborn social structure in the late 20th century in addition to the stagnant national economy.

 

▲ Zephyr Dog, Acrylic on canvas, 45.5x53 cm, 2022 ⓒ Wada ChizuThe culture of this young generation has spread to cartoons and computer games, that is, Internet culture, and has spread to interest in cartoon and surreal characters and visual elements. The characters in the works of the exhibition artists, consisting of young generations in Japan, are in the form of children as if showing resistance from the previous generation, antipathy to social conformity, and loneliness.

Wada Chizu paradoxically explores the deceptive elements of cute images by dealing with issues such as loneliness, inner isolation, and anxiety of modern people.

She uses pastel colors and cute girl characters to create surreal images as objects, but the characters in the paintings seem to have a rather expressionless or surprised look. The artist captures the images of modern people on a canvas, which may seem glamorous on the outside but has an inherent sense of depression and anxiety through a pure and beautiful utopia.

▲ Clouds at Dusk, Oil on canvas, 53x45.5cm, 2023ⓒ Nakazawa Ryuji

Nakazawa Ryuji is an artist who stands out for his rich and dynamic brush strokes reminiscent of the Western Impressionist style. He paints by using a technique that scatters boundaries with blurred lines as if moving a moment of a scene that passed by on a canvas.

Through the combination of the two, he portrays on the canvas the fascinating world between dreams and reality beyond the boundaries of imagination, the unknown world felt in familiarity and the fantastic world felt in clichéd daily life.

Okumura Aka features a girl who is eternal in the cycle of life and death and paints in a modern way of expression that combines traditional Japanese visual elements and popular culture.

He uses traditional classical art elements such as waves, cherry blossoms, and fans in Ukiyo-e, a Japanese art style that flourished from the 17th to 19th centuries, to graphicize them or recreate them into modern images.

▲ Landscape with Sea and Flowers, Acrylic on canvas, 72.7x60.6cm, 2023 ⓒ Okumura AkaThe artist expresses the world of death through a black background and uses a girl as a character in it to paint a shining world of life. He conceived the works under the influence of life-threatening disasters created by climate change, wars around the world, and unrest in the post-pandemic era.

He interprets death as a natural cycle of life and regeneration by expressing a world that continues to evolve in the cycle of life and death through the existence of an immortal girl.

Each of the three artists, visually influenced by geometric and oriental patterns and cartoon character expressions based on traditional Japanese culture, will give visitors visual pleasure in a unique way of expression.

Sayart / Nao Yim, yimnao@naver.com