The 2022 ART FAIR ASIA FUKUOKA opened on September the 30th at the Fukuoka International Convention Center, with Japanese and overseas galleries focusing on the local area. Shun Art Gallery presented important works of six outstanding Japanese artists in recent years at booth N07, including artists 前田正宪（Masanori MAEDA）、内田江美（Emi UCHIDA）、中村绫花（Ayaka NAKAMURA）、門田奈々（Nana MONDA） 、原田透（Toru HARADA）、Mariko HAYASHI. The concentration of these artists’ works reflect the vigorous development of Japanese contemporary art, as well as the artists’ rich creative techniques and free creative state.

内田 江美 Emi UCHIDA

Emi Uchida’s abstract works are infinitely extending as a whole. But on closer inspection, they revealed a dense interplay of charcoal paintinged lines suggestive of a network.The impression conveyed by the painted surfaces was of space exploding into infinity. Here were the neural networks of the human body connecting with the unbounded expanses of the universe and transporting with them the viewer. The familiar segued spectacularly into the ineffable.

At the same time, Emi Uchida is also engaged in printmaking. She draws nourishment from the “Shunga” of the Edo period, using lines and collages to deal with taboos and explicitness, concealment and revealing, and endow tradition with new interpretation and vitality.

前田 正憲 Masanori MAEDA

Compared with acrylic or oil painting materials, the Japanese pigments used in Nihonga are not only complex but also difficult to be effectively used in abstraction. It is this complexity that gives the genre called Nihonga its captivating allure, and an emerging school of contemporary Japanese painters is bringing this centuries-old tradition, previously leaning heavily on figurative painting, into the 21st century with bold colors and striking abstractions. Masanori MAEDA is one of the pioneers.

The prestigious Tokyo Art University is recognized as the most difficult art university to be admitted to in Japan, its glittering alumni essentially comprise the modern art history of Japan since the Meiji Period. Maeda graduated from this university and won the Ataka Prize. The artist’s early figurative works are quiet and implicit, the simple colors have the slightest changes, the glimmer of time is attached to the depicted still life, and the sight is kept in an eternal moment for a long time. In recent years, Maeda has renewed his focus on abstraction, a style of painting that he had always wished to paint, inspired by the simplicity of the Mono-ha movement and the pine trees of the legendary Medieval Japanese painter Hasegawa Tohaku. His brushstrokes reveal a tension in the void, which contains hidden unknowns, as if it is the sensibility honed in the cold and windy winter, serenity and gracefulness. Maeda tries to capture the superposition between “visible and invisible” in the image. The elements of life and death, pain and happiness are juxtaposed, once forgotten, the audience can enter another realm of transcendence, tranquility, and power.

原田 透 Toru HARADA

He has a master of fine art degree from Kyushu Industria university. He started his first career as a landscape designer in China and currently works as an independent artist in Japan. His works are inspired by his life, the people, and the culture he encountered in Shanghai. In artist-in-residence programs in Japan and other countries, his iconic images from local materials explore the local roots. He is working in the fields of mural paintings and installations, which allow him to be free from specific forms, or entrenched styles.

中村 綾花 Ayaka NAKAMURA

“Ayaka nakamura” creates paintings and video works under the theme of “the existence of life”, aiming to create delicate yet strong visuals.

She was featured in “100 Filmmakers 2015” (BNN Publishing).

Her live painting on a 7m wide and 3m high panel at Roppongi Art Night in 2016 was well received, and he began to do live painting at events. She is active both in Japan and abroad, and has had solo exhibitions at Bunkamura Box Gallery (Tokyo), Enatsu Gallery (Tokyo), and EPIC (Tokyo). She has participated in group exhibitions at EPICENTRO ART (Berlin), White Box (NY), WAH Center ¥ (NY), Anthology Film Archives (NY), ART FORMOSA (Taipei), and OLA Galleri & Ateljé (Sweden). In recent years, She has also been active in the United States, Denmark, and China. She won the Grand Prix in the first edition of “ARTIST NEW GATE”, an art contest to discover new largescale artists.

2009-2013 attended Musashino Art University, Tokyo JP (BA Fine Art, Printmaking). Staying artist in residency and working all over the world, US, Denmark, Shanghai and Tokyo and Kyoto in Japan.

門田 奈々 Nana MONDA

Nana Monda has been drawing works on the theme of women from the beginning. Her work is composed in harmony with the female image by drawing “flowers” to match the female image that is her motif. The complex relationship between inner emotions and beautiful appearances such as beauty and ugliness, strength and weakness, softness and rigidity, calmness and fear, are properly expressed in the artist’s pen.

She was shocked by the natural sculpture and beauty of color when she moved to Kumamoto, changing her style to use her current colorful and vibrant colors. After that, in 2014, he won the New Face Award at the National Art Center, Tokyo, and was selected for the Kumamoto “Drawing Power” 2014 Grand Prix.

In recent years, Kadida has started to create related series inspired by the “Higo (old name of Kumamoto) Rokka (six flowers)” that have been cherished since the Edo period in Kumamoto since the Edo period. Hosokawa Shigekata (1721–1785), the sixth Hosokawa lord of Kumamoto, was an enthusiastic natural historian. Due to the lord’s methodical cultivation of local varieties and an extensive collection of botanical books, planting and appreciating flowers became a desirable gentlemanly accomplishment, and samurai in Kumamoto competed to grow the most beautiful specimens. The artist places traditional flowers and women in traditional costumes in the picture, hiding their real-life background; exaggerated slender necks and warm jade-like faces, seem to coexist harmoniously with flowers in nature, but at the same time, the unavoidable sense of strangeness and alienation are also lingering on in the work. The fate and identity of the woman behind the picture have become a mystery.

林 麻里子 Mariko HAYASHI

The flow of nature, the atmosphere, the flow of time, expressing plants, water, wind, etc. with a unique worldview.

Her works are characterized by their beautiful use of color and sense of rhythm.From her works, you can also feel her sound.

She can feel the depth, as if she is protruding from the frame.Her imaginative admiration for sounds and colors.

She was born and raised in an area that knows deep winter.This must have been woven from her sensitive childhood.After graduating from her university, she gained experience as an interior designer.She has been involved in planning, supervising and producing murals, etc.She has been developing her own works since 2000.​It is undeniable that this history has a great influence on her style.

Her work is based on the idea that she wants to create art that fits the space.As it was created with space in mind, she creates a gentle atmosphere while blending into the space.