We are pleased to announce “Good Night My Friends”, Ryosuke KAWAHIRA’s first solo exhibition at gallery UG Osaka Umeda, held from May 15 to June 4, 2024.
Ryosuke KAWAHIRA, who has been one of the gallery’s exclusive artists, was selected from the 2019 UG Project “KONSHIN-TEN”, which is a part of our activities to discover and nurture young artists for around 20 years now.
Recently, he has been making his mark in various places through his remarkable activities, including a solo show at Ginza Tsutaya, a group exhibition in Macau, a solo exhibition at gallery UG Tennoz, and participating in Art Fair Tokyo.
KAWAHIRA transferred the traumas from his imaginative childhood into unique works of art. Using actual briefs as canvas, he depicts the nightmares he had and the ghosts and monsters he imagined.
It seems to be an atonement for the fact that he wet his briefs when he was a child because he could not go to the bathroom in time.
In recent years, he has begun to work more on canvas, and the brief that used to be his material to paint on, has appeared as a hero in his paintings. As his child was born and grew up, the characters overlapped with his own childhood memories and came to be projected more vividly.
At the same time, his work, composed of clear, bold outlines and simple, vividly colored backgrounds, and further comicalized, contains elements of Superflat which has been gaining attention in the contemporary Japanese art scene.
"I wonder where the ghosts and monsters I met in my dreams when I was a child have gone.
As I grew older, my dreams began to become more real, I stopped having nightmares, I don't wear briefs anymore, and I no longer wet the bed.
The battle of bedwetting came to an end, and peace at last...
'Good Night' is a signal for them to fight.
I am sure that in someone's dreams, the bed-wetting battle may still be raging."
"Connecting artworks to people, connecting people to each other through art."
galleryUG are always there for our artists.
We will grow together with the artists and support them from production to promotion.
We aim to further enrich and expand the contemporary art scene by proposing the ideal way for galleries to be.
In moments when I feel like I’m in a place independent of my surroundings,
I sometimes feel like I’m in a different time and space.
The feeling is like clouds or smoke that change shape with no regard for time
that people have to live by, and it also feels like a space of my own.
To turn, various scenes that came up in my imagination from things I encountered.
To express freedom, time and desires that are on the verge of being discarded from memory.
That is what is important, in order for me to be me and for a person to be them self.
The motifs chosen by Nami OKADA for her artwork are places she has visited personally. Her artwork arouses feelings of déjà vu and of reaching across time in viewers, whose backgrounds all differ.
Each person forms a distinct impression of a given building or piece of scenery due to the differences in their memories and experiences. Such spaces thus possess a multitude of forms.
It is only when there is commonality in the interpretations of multiple viewers that a given piece of scenery takes on certain meaning.
OKADA brings life to One View by exploring the relationship between pieces of scenery that have taken on meaning due to the overlapping of such commonalities and pieces of scenery whose meaning has yet to take shape.
2F TERRADA ART COMPLEX Ⅱ, 1-32-8, Higashishinagawa, Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo
8 minutes walk from Tennozu Isle Station on the Tokyo Waterfront Area Rapid Transit Rinkai Line(Exit B)
11 minutes walk from Tokyo Monorail Haneda Airport Line Tennozu Isle Station(Central Exit)
11F Daimaru Umeda Department Store
3-1-1, Umeda, Kita-ku, Osaka
From JR Osaka Station from 1-minute walk/JR Kita-Shinchi Station a 6-minute walk
From Midosuji Line Umeda Station from 2-minute walk/Tanimachi Line Higashi-Umeda Station from 8-minute walk/Yotsubashi Line Nishi-Umeda Station a 4-minute walk
From Hankyu Umeda Station from 13-minute walk/Hanshin Umeda Station a 12-minute walk
This is a production studio for exclusive artists of gallery UG, which will open in 2020. It was built to approach and support artists from a long-term perspective.