ShugoArts Show

Born in Kanagawa, Japan, in 1980. Currently lives and works in Tokyo. Chiba’s paintings are created through a process in which the artist actively engages with the objects of his choice as much as necessary; he extracts images from his surroundings and previous life events and reconstructs them on canvas while utilizing his handmade motifs. With his sophisticated skill set, Chiba can differentiate textures of various motifs in his paintings where he establishes a complex world combining pseudo-reality, pure artificiality and reality. While sincerely imprinting copious achievements of paintings of all times and places on his mind, the artist boldly disturbs the existing structure of contemporary art with his preferred medium, painting.

Selected exhibitions: Sideward Exhibition, ShugoArts, Tokyo, 2023; Masaya Chiba Exhibition, Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, Tokyo, 2021; Assembridge NAGOYA, Former Minato Dormitory of Nagoya customs, Nagoya, 2019; Painting and …, Gallery αM, Tokyo, 2018; Perry Rhodan and my life, Art Center Ongoing, Tokyo, 2018; MAM Collection 006: Materials and Boundaries – Handiwirman Saputra + Chiba Masaya, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, 2017; What to Do With Memories by Utilizing Things Such as Indirect Lighting in Light Box Style, Yatsuzaki Halo, Feeling of Wanting to Kiss, Family Story, Sagamihara Stone Burger, Forget Medusa, and Element 50m Ahead, ShugoArts, Tokyo, 2017; Discordant Harmony, Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Hiroshima, 2015 (Travelled to Seoul and Taipei); Roppongi Crossing 2013: OUT OF DOUBT, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, 2013

Masato Kobayashi was born in Tokyo in 1957. He was the Japanese representative of the 1996 São Paulo Bienniale. In 1997, invited by Jan Hoet, he traveled to Europe, and continued to create works in various locations while based in Ghent, Belgium. Kobayashi returned to Japan in 2006 and began working based in Tomonoura, Fukuyama City, Hiroshima. He was also a professor at the Tokyo University of the Arts from 2017 to 2023. He has developed a unique technique of applying color by rubbing it into the canvas while supporting the fabric with one hand, simultaneously stretching it over the wooden frame to bring the painting to life and “aiming for a painting that does not lose its essence by merely existing.” Kobayashi has prolifically produced paintings that possess a form and unique brightness that can only emerge from that specific situation.

Selected solo exhibitions: “About Freedom”, ShugoArts, Tokyo, 2023; “Family of this Planet”, ShugoArts, Tokyo, 2021; “Artist and the Model”, ShugoArts, Tokyo, 2019; “ART TODAY 2012”, Sezon Museum of Modern Art, Nagano, 2012; “MASATO KOBAYASHI – The Paint of the Planet”, Nariwa Museum, Okayama, 2009; “Starry Paint, stars of outer space by pure painting”, Tensta Konsthall, Spanga, Sweden, 2004; “A Son of Painting Masato Kobayashi”, S.M.A.K., Ghent, 2001; “KOBAYASHI Masato”, The Miyagi Museum of Art, 2000.

Publications: Masato Kobayashi MK, HeHe, 2024; The autobiographical novel trilogy, Paint of this Planet—Under the tree at Hitotsubashi University, ART DIVER, 2018; Paint of this Planet—Duifhuisstraat 52, ART DIVER, 2020

Selected Public Collections: Iwaki City Art Museum (Iwaki, Japan). The Miyagi Museum of Art (Sendai, Japan). The Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (Tokyo, Japan). The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (Tokyo, Japan). Utsunomiya Museum of Art (Utsunomiya, Japan). S.M.A.K. The Municipal Museum of Contemporary Art (Ghent, Belgium). The Vangi Sculpture Garden Museum (Shizuoka, Japan)

Born in Niigata, Japan in 1964. Maruyama currently lives and works in Tokyo. He has become one of the most important painters in Japan since the 1990s. The artist incorporates the stain technique, a painting technique using cotton cloths soaked with water and acrylics, in order to depict his motifs which are so soft that they melt with time and place. His paintings are figurative yet abstract, ushering the viewers to a plateau where there is no boundary between a subject and an object; in other words, the viewers become part of his paintings. Maruyama’s painting practice is bolstered by his diligent, rational and sincere research and practice of “the possibility of the spaces that exist only inside paintings.” He has been a Professor in the Painting Department at the Musashino Art University since 2000. Maruyama received The Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technologyʼs Art Encouragement Prize for New Artists in 2008.

Selected exhibitions: HIRAKU Project Vol.14 Naofumi Maruyama Kicking the Water: Sengokuhara, Pola Museum of Art, Kanagawa, 2023; Kicking the Water, ShugoArts, Tokyo, 2022; Lascaux and Weather, ShugoArts,Tokyo, 2018; FLOWING, Wooson Gallery, Daegu, 2017; GROUND2: Talking About Paintings, Talking About Seeing, Musashino Art University Museum & Library, Tokyo, 2016; Niigata Creations ‒ Museum in Motion, Niigata City Art Museum, Niigata, 2014; Floating Boat, Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, Aichi, 2011; Transparent Footsteps, ShugoArts, Tokyo, 2010; the front in the back, Meguro Museum of Art, Tokyo, 2008; Portrait Session, Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Hiroshima, 2007; The Elegance of Silence: Contemporary Art from East Asia, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, 2005; HAPPINESS: A SURVIVAL GUIDE FOR ART + LIFE, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, 2003; Taipei Biennial: Great Theatre of the World, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei, 2002; MOT Annual 1999: Modest Radicalism, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, 1999; 8th Triennale-India, Lalit Kala Akademi, National Academy of Art, New Delhi, 1994; Solo at Satani Gallery Tokyo, 1992

Born in 1989 in Venice, Italy, Anju Michele currently lives in Kyoto, Japan. Using silver and gold evaporated aluminum paper, a material used in Nishijin textiles, as a support, he creates paintings that embody the changing light. Expressed in light and organic forms that are difficult to describe, his practice “begins with the gesture,” showing us that there is a world that is different from the reality we usually see. And Anju’s body, which makes it difficult for him to hear outside sounds, fosters a rich sensory experience and reveals free and fearless brushwork.

Selected exhibitions: Circular Skies, ShugoArts, Tokyo, 2024; Imaginarium, ShugoArts, Tokyo, 2020; VOCA The Vision of Contemporary Art 2020, The Ueno Royal Museum, Tokyo, 2020; Yokohama Triennale, Yokohama Museum of Art , Kanagawa, 2014; About Freedom, TRAUMARIS, Tokyo, 2011; Kagemi of love, HIGURE 17-15cas, Tokyo, 2009; Infanzia, Cube gallery, Venice, 2005

Born in Kyoto, Japan in 1962. Mishima moved to Venice in 1989. Having established a residence in Kyoto in 2011, she lives and works between the two cities. Collaborating with glassmiths on Murano Island, Italy, the artist takes advantage of the translucency and viscosity of Venetian glass in order to create clear glass sculptures, which bear the contours of light while becoming parts of the environments. Since Mishima’s sculptures visualize the energy of the exhibited spaces by absorbing the surrounding air and light, they have received high praise as public artworks as well. Currently the artist is expanding her practice beyond fine art through collaborating with different creative industries such as architecture, fashion and design. Solo exhibition “RITSUE MISHIMA – GLASS WORKS” at the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice in 2022, awarded the Fondazione di Venezia award for the best project in the Venice section of The Italian Glass Weeks. The artist also received BVLGARI AVRORA AWARDS 2022.

Selected solo exhibitions: Forms of Light, ShugoArts, Tokyo, 2023; RITSUE MISHIMA ‒ GLASS WORKS, Gallerie dellʼAccademia, Venice, 2022; HALL OF LIGHT, ShugoArts, Tokyo, 2019-2020; In Grimani. Ritsue Mishima Glass Works, Museum of Palazzo Grimani, Venice, 2013; As it should be, Shiseido Gallery, Tokyo, 2011; Frozen garden / Fruits of fire, Museum Boijmans, Rotterdam, 2010.
Selected group exhibtions: Wonderment Noe Aoki / Ritsue Mishima, Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum, Tokyo, 2024; Asia Corridor Contemporary Art Exhibition, Culture City of East Asia 2017 Kyoto, Nijo Castle, Kyoto, 2017; Yokohama Triennale, Yokohama Museum of Art, Kanagawa, 2014; the 53rd International Art Exhibition: Venice Biennale, Venice Pavilion, Venice, 2009

Born in Nagano, Japan, in 1947. Currently lives and works in Saitama. Toya started his artistic career with his attempt to reconstruct sculpture as a medium, which had been deconstructed by the preceding art movements such as postminimalism and mono-ha. Since the 1970s, the artist has diligently pursued the principles and structures of sculpture, which resonate with the epistemological foundations of our very existence, underscoring their essence and possibility through his artmaking practice. By manipulating various art histories of all times and places, encompassing the period of cave paintings and Greco-Roman sculptures to contemporary art, with his bona fide sculptural philosophy, Toya has been recognized as one of the leading sculptors in Japan, Asia and the Pacific at large. The artist received the Art Encouragement Prize of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Japan in 2004 and his Medal of Honor with Purple Ribbon in 2009. He is also a Professor Emeritus at Musashino Art University.

Selected exhibitions: Toya Shigeo Sculpture, Nagano Prefectural Art Museum, Nagano, 2022-2023, The Museum of Modern Art, Saitama, 2023; Body of the Gaze: from Scatter to Linkage, from Linkage to Accumulation, ShugoArts, Tokyo, 2022; Shigeo Toya Forest – Lake: Regeneration and Memory, Ichihara Lakeside Museum, Chiba, 2021; Body of the Gaze, ShugoArts, Tokyo, 2019; Shigeo Toya−Sculpture to Emerge, Musashino Art University Museum & Library, Tokyo, 2017; Memories in the cave, Vangi Sculpture Garden Museum, Shizuoka, 2011-12; Shigeo Toya : Folds, Gazes and Anima of the Woods, Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, Aichi, 2003; The 3rd Kwangju Biennale, Kwangju, 2000; Forest of Visions, Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Hiroshima, 1995; Yama – Mori ‒ Mura, Kuma Museum of Art, Ehime, 1994; The First Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 1993; The 43rd Venice Biennale, Japanese Pavilion, Venice, 1988; Selected publications: Shigeo Toya−Sculpture and Words (Choukoku-To-Kotoba）1974-2013, Vangi Sculpture Garden Museum, 2014; Shigeo Toya−Sculpture to Emerge, Musashino Art University Museum & Library, 2017