“art stage OSAKA 2022” is the first international art trade fair to be held in Osaka with carefully selected Japanese and overseas galleries focusing on contemporary art from the local and international art scene. At Booth 02, Shun Art Gallery held a solo exhibition for the famous Japanese manga artist and actor Kotobuki SHIRIAGARI. The artist is known for his dark humor and social criticism. This exhibition showcases the artist’s latest works. At the same time, booth 28 presented the important works of 6 outstanding Japanese artists in recent years, including artists Masanori MAEDA, Kotobuki SHIRIAGARI, Minamishima TAKASHI, Takuma KAMINE, Emi UCHIDA, Ayaka NAKAMURA. The concentration of these artists’ works reflects the vigorous development of Japanese contemporary art, as well as the artists’ rich creative methods and free creative state.

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.

Maeda has won many awards, including the Ataka Prize of the Tokyo University of the Arts, the Fuirann Award for Best Artwork, and the second prize of the Chicago International Art Competition. His works have been exhibited at major international art fairs and successfully auctioned at Sotheby’s in Hong Kong. His works were collected by institutions such as Ryumon Temple Collection in Tokyo, Tokyo University of the Arts.

尻上 寿 Kotobuki SHIRIAGARI

Kotobuki SHIRIAGARI was born in 1958 in Shizuoka City, Japan. After graduating from Tama Art University with a major in Graphic Design in 1981, Shiriagari joined Kirin Brewery Company, Ltd. and worked on packaging design and advertisements.

In 1985, he debuted as a cartoonist with the book Ereki na Haru, receiving attention as a new type of gag cartoonist whose humor centers on parody.

Working independently since 1994, Kotobuki Shiriagari continues to release fantasy and literary series works and other works in a wide range of genres, including satirical four-panel comic strips for newspapers and long-form narrative manga, as well as underground manga. While continuing to release original work, in recent years he has expanded beyond manga into a variety of media, including video and art.

南島 隆 Takashi MINAMISHIMA

1957, born in Nagano, Japan.

1983, graduated from Musashino Art University, School of Sculpture.

1980, the 2nd China-Japan Exhibition (China-Japan News Agency) Quasi-Grand Prize · Tokai Broadcasting Award.

2003, the 18th National Cultural Festival Art Exhibition (Yamagata Prefecture Cultural Agency) Executive Committee Chairman Award, exhibited in the Japanese Modern Figurative Sculpture Exhibition and the Toyota Triennial.

2005, Expo 2005 Aichi, Japan Art Gallery Exhibition, Georgia Award.

Professor in the field of art production and expression, Department of Art and Design Expression, Faculty of Arts, Women’s Art University.

A total of 21 solo exhibitions were held.

上根 拓馬 Takuma KAMINE

Born in Osaka in 1978 and now active in Tokyo, Takuma Kamine graduated with a BA of Fine Arts from the Painting Department at Tokyo Zokei University. He currently holds a position there as a part-time instructor of Fine Art.

Artist creates installations based on interpretations of gods and spirits that appear in the traditional Buddhist world. He breathes new life into archaic figures and brings them in line with the contemporary by recreating them as three-dimensional “guardian” figures that encompass spirituality. Takuma Kamine imbibes his figurines with an energy similar to that harbored by Buddha statues, combining this with his aesthetic interest in science fiction. He uses elements such as space suits and robotics to evolve new types of statue and create guardians that consist of modern parts but are settled with the presence of Buddha.

When Takuma Kamine first encountered the images of Buddhist guardian deities as a child, he was filled with awe and fear. As a working artist now, he has crystallized those initial emotions into figures which borrow elements from Japanese animation and comics. They are not devotional pieces, nor are they facsimiles of extant Buddhist iconography; rather, Kamine’s exhaustive studies of Buddhist scriptures and fascination with robotic protectors, such as gundams, informed these deeply personal iterations.

Kamine has shown his art in solo exhibitions in Japan, the United States, and group exhibitions in China, Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines. His artistic practice won him the Hirake Goma! Vol. 2 Birth Art Award in 2004 and the 4th MOVE Art Management Jury Prize in 2006.

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.

Her works have been exhibited in Japan, China, Taiwan (China), the United States, Europe, Turkey, Singapore, and other places. Some important solo exhibitions were held in 2016 at the Taipei 101 Tower Art Museum (Taiwan, China), in 2018 at the Miura Art Museum (Ehime, Japan), in 2018 at the Kaohsiung City Government Cultural Bureau/Taiwan Cultural Center (Taiwan, China), and in 2020 at the Setouchi Art Museum (Okayama, Japan) and other institutions.

中村 绫花 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.