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Isaji Yugo Solo Exhibition
“Purely Home-Made Street Art”

■Period       

August 24 (Saturday), 2024 - September 14 (Saturday), 2024

Wednesdays through Saturdays 13:00 - 18:00

(closed on Sundays, Mondays, Tuesdays, and National Holidays)​

▼OPENING RECEPTION

August 24 (Saturday), 2024 | 17:00-18:00

■Venue　　

KANA KAWANISHI GALLERY

 4-7-6 Shirakawa, Koto-ku, Tokyo 135-0021 JAPAN

KANA KAWANISHI GALLERY is pleased to present “Purely Home-Made Street Art,” a solo exhibition by Isaji Yugo starting August 24, 2024. 

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Isaji Yugo (b. 1985, Gifu, Japan) is an artist who creates works based on daily necessities that vividly deviate from the conventional viewpoint by shifting and modifying the point of view of the objects. He has exhibited his works in many Asian countries, including the Philippines, Taiwan, and Malaysia, as well as in Sweden as an overseas trainee of the Pola Art Foundation. This exhibition will be his first solo exhibition at a commercial gallery in Japan since completing his overseas training in Sweden.

 

Isaji says that when he visited the Munster Sculpture Project, he “wandered around the city and saw everything as sculpture,” and he calls this phenomenon “sculpture intoxication,” which is one of the starting points for his work. By bringing this perspective into his daily life, he has created sculptures that easily deviate from the known, using all kinds of ready-made materials and structures, such as cutter blades, plastic bottles, ballpoint pens, and other everyday objects.

 

If we define street art as an intervention in the public sphere accompanied by physicality, then Isaji’s works, which have been created from his experiences in Munster and continue to shake up the everyday, are truly “pure home-based street art.”

Artist Statement

It was about 10 years ago. In a corner of the Asagaya Station platform, there was a nuisance of placing a cup of raw rice, and my friend who lived in the neighborhood at the time and I got into a lively discussion about it. My erudite friend gave me an explanation that sounded like it, such as, “Since an ear of rice is a symbol of lightning, isn’t this an act of praying for rain?” After that, whenever I used the station, I always checked to see if there was any rice on the floor. Even when there was no rice, pigeons would wander around it greedily, and the warning message, “Please do not leave rice here. In malicious cases, we will report to the police. Asagaya Station Manager,” conveyed the presence of the nuisance.

 

Remembering this, I had a very unpleasant imagination. What if the culprit who placed the rice was a contemporary artist? If that were the case, I would not feel the purity at all that my friend and I had hoped for. When the culprit's attribution is revealed, we know that it was a social act as well.

 

After all, an artist does not seem to have mystical powers. However, I do hope that our work will reach outside of society.

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Isaji Yugo

Artist Profile

Isaji Yugo was born in 1985 in Gifu, Japan. Graduated from the Department of Sculpture, Tama Art University in 2008, and studied in Sweden as an overseas trainee of the Pola Art Foundation in 2019.
Major solo exhibitions include “Second Hand World” (2020, Art Center Ongoing, Tokyo, Japan), “rehabilitation” (2020, Gallery Bageriet, Gothenburg), and “The behind of the world by daily goods” (2017, Kofu Art Project, Yamanashi, Japan). Major group exhibitions include “Come on yesterday” (2020, Suisei Club, Kanazawa, Japan), “Tanagokoro” (2019, FLESH, Tokyo, Japan), and “New works” (2017, The Drawing Room Gallery, Makati).
Awards received include selection for “Tokyo Wonder Wall 2010” (2010) and a grant from the Aichi Art Program, “Arts Challenge 2015” (2014).

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