As the gallery’s first exhibition of 2016,Yutaka Kikutake Gallery is pleased to present a group exhibition comprising of the works of Nerhol, Mariko Oya, and Reina Mikame, from January 16^th to February 13^th 2016.  Nerhol marked their solo presentation with Yutaka Kikutake Gallery last summer and are anticipated to achieve further success this coming year, and artists Mariko Oya and Reina Mikame will exhibit with the gallery for the first time.

The photographic works of Mariko Oya consist of selections from “Lumen de Lumine,” a series of photographs taken within a church that capture the external light lambently filtering through the stained-glass windows. As certain strands of light reflect and waver amidst the interior, others serve to softly illuminate the various entities of the church. The sun-lit stained-glass windows glisten and delicately diffuse to give birth to a new light –the “Lumen de Lumine” (light amongst light), an uncertain entity that seemingly manifests only to fade once again with time. The works appear to suggest the transient nature of “light” as an entity fundamentally inherent within the medium of photography.

Nerhol’s works that are featured in the exhibition have been selected from the series “01” and “Slicing the Onion,” that were respectively introduced last summer. In “01” the artists took a variety of widely distributed images from the Internet, and within them engraved the numbers of ‘0’ and ‘1,’ digits that are recognized as being both the minimum and maximum units in programming language. “Slicing the Onion” is a work that derives its motif from an onion, created through a repetitive process of slicing and photographing a single onion, of which the images are then layered and engraved into. Such as the title of the work being reminiscent of Günter Grass’s novel Peeling the Onion, both series of works ostensibly penetrate the sinews of ambiguity that is harbored within human life, and further embody opportunities that serve to symbolically visualize these issues.

Reina Mikame’s paintings are created in a manner that appears to drift back and forth between opposite ends of the spectrum of the abstract and the objective. Familiar elements that exist within the artist’s surroundings, the artist’s experiences, and the various phenomena that emerge around the artist are conveyed through means of a harmonious balance between the paint and the brushstrokes. At a glance harnessing a precise air of brevity yet at the same time profoundly orchestrated, the works seemingly evolve into abstract portrayals, while in other moments embody a sense of objectivity. Mikame’s works illustrate forethoughts towards the consistent conditions of painting while simultaneously enticing the viewers with her very own unique world, anticipating the artist to further expand her future endeavors towards contemporary painting.