Yutaka Kikutake Gallery is pleased to present “The doorway (hole, cliff),” a solo exhibition with Yukari Motoyama from September 14 to October 19, 2019. The exhibition marks the artist’s first solo presentation with the gallery, and features a selection of new works centering on motifs such as stones, matches, and strands of grass swaying in the breeze.

Since 2015, Motoyama has continued to work on her “Drawing Paper” series that are created by disassembling and reconstructing the various elements that make up painting. In this series, motifs are selected from a large number of drawings rendered with a digital paint tool, which are then painted onto transparent acrylic board using white and black acrylic paint.

By concentrating on the act of “drawing” through an initial process of working with digital software, the artists’ personal attachments to the motifs, the narratives that they harbor, and any excessive decorativeness is removed, disassembled, and transformed into a series of symbols. The selected drawings are painted on the acrylic board in an inverted manner, and as the reverse side of the painted surface faces the viewer, the unique texture of the painting is replaced with the smooth and uniform acrylic surface. What can be observed here is a multi-layered approach to the history of painting, with considerations as to how to keep paintings concise, depicted through simple symbols.

While engaging in such attempts, there are indeed times when it proves difficult to convey the symbolic elements of what is depicted to the viewer. Motoyama refers to the sense of distance that exists between the artist and viewer’s perception as a “hole” that suddenly emerges, or like a feeling of being pushed off a “cliff.” Yukari Motoyama’s new works reflect her efforts in continuing to propose new forms of painting while confronting the various aspects that appear when disassembling and constructing the elements that serve to constitute them.

Yukari Motoyama was born in 1992 in the Aichi Prefecture. She received an M.F.A in Oil Painting from the Graduate School of Fine Arts, Kyoto City University of Arts in 2017. Her recent solo exhibitions include, “Tokyo Fortune Journey” (2018, Volvo Studio Aoyama, Tokyo), with participation in group exhibitions such as “Paint( )ings” (2018, Yutaka Kikutake Gallery,)　“Here and beyond” (2017, Aomori Contemporary Art Centre, Aomori) and “Singing in falsetto” (2017, Oyama City Kurumayama Museum of Art, Tochigi).