We are pleased to announce that from Friday, December 5 to Saturday, December 20, 2025, gallery UG Tennoz will host a solo exhibition by Kenichi OBANA.
Gallery UG is pleased to present OBANA Kenichi’s「Stop for a moment」exhibition.
OBANA was born in 1981 in Gunma prefecture. In 2006, he completed his graduate art course in the Oil Painting Program at Tsukuba University and has since then actively held solo exhibitions, art fairs and shown his art at art festivals in both Japan and overseas.
He is currently based in Akita where he continues to create art.
While reflecting on people’s livelihood, tradition, local landscapes, and history, he creates drawings and sculptures based on the characters and stories he creates within himself.
The unknown masked men who appear in Obana’s art are less like heroes and more like villains. Minor characters that have a small role in the main story. They were never meant to be protagonists yet they quietly go about their normal lives. Happily laughing with friends, crying about unfulfilled dreams and getting angry at things that can’t be helped. Though their stories are never untold, surely each of them lives with his own small happiness and sense of fulfillment.
Their clumsy, earnest way of living is, in itself, deeply compelling.
In the「Stop for a moment」exhibition, new pieces of art will be displayed alongside pieces that have previously been exhibited only once.
As mentioned, Obana often creates art rooted in the context and history of a specific place, and we had thought that setting them in a disconnected setting would be difficult. So we hope that by reconfiguring the works in a setting different from before, new stories can be created.
We warmly invite you to take this opportunity to view the exhibition.
For this exhibition titled「Stop for a moment」it includes not only my new pieces of art but also pieces previously shown in the past.
Although I felt hesitant about presenting these pieces of art again, seeing the gallery’s spacious, pure white environment somehow lifted that hesitation and made me feel at ease.
In this exhibition, I aim to overlook my art from the past few years, while also exploring how they appear when displayed in a space deliberately disconnected from any specific land or history.
I hope this exhibition will serve as a brief pause in my practice, allowing for a moment of reflection and paving the way for new developments.
OBANA Kenichi.
【OBANA Kenichi】
1981 - Born in Gunma, Ota City.
2004 - Graduated from Tsukuba University of Art and Design in Western Art
2006 - Completed Graduate Art Course in the Oil Painting Program at Tsukuba University
Recent major exhibitions include: 「Now Shibuya」Hikarie Wall Art Project (Shibuya Hikarie, 2025), 「Ghost: When the Invisible Visible」 (Arts Maebashi, 2025), Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale 2024 (2024, Tokamachi City), Aichi Triennale 2022 (2022, Tokoname City), Setouchi Triennale 2022 (2022, Tadotsu Town), and VOCA 2021 (2021, Ueno Royal Museum, Tokyo).
Awards include the Jomo Arts and Culture Prize (2022), VOCA Prize (2021), Tokyo Midtown Award Excellence Award (2015), and LUMIN meets ART AWARD Runner-up (2014).
