PAST EXHIBITION

"OUTERSIDE2" Kenichiro Mizuno, Motohiro Hayakawa, Masanori Ushiki, Makito Takagi

Date

December 10th(Sat) – 25th(Sun), 2016

Time

12:00 – 19:00
Closed on Monday, Sunday and Holiday
※We will be opened in 25th Dec.

Venue

CALM & PUNK GALLERY

Entrance

Free

Opening Reception

Decmeber 9th(Fri)
19:00-22:00

Calm and Punk Gallery announces a comeback of the exhibition Outerside after a year’s break. This time around, we come close to chojin [supermen] as a common feature of the four participating artists: 60s-born Kenichiro Mizuno, 70s-born Motohiro Hayakawa, 80s-born Masanori Ushiki, and a new-comer Makito Takagi born in ‘86.
We aim to consider beauty of form in chojins from multiple and new perspectives, illustrated by the old boy trio after 12 months’ absence and Takagai, using his trademark technique that allows drawings look like photographs taken with flash.
An opening reception, joined by wizards of the four, is scheduled on Friday December 9.

Artists’ Statements

“It is pursuit of defining and varying humanoids. Let’s get rid of sci-fi-esque consistency of human beings, spacemen, or robots, and just devote yourself on creating forms. My aesthetics is summarized in unconscious inferiority complex revealed by these paintings.”
Kenichiro Mizuno
Nov. 20, 2016

“What might happen if flock of girls jump into my world? — I did my paintings from that point of view.”
Motohiro Hayakawa
Nov. 18, 2016

“It’s not about sampling or remixing, either. It’s about keep running in full throttle on all lanes.”
Masanori Ushiki
Nov. 18, 2016

“It’s cool somehow; not kids’ stuff but a serious impersonating game. (You’re betting on it.) It’s sophisticated and nostalgic in a way, but the time is not today, yesterday or tomorrow… I wish to be there, outside; the place nobody named.”
Makito Takagi
Nov. 18, 2016

The Painters Offering Monsters Places to Belong

The four painters who participate in this exhibition draw what that doesn’t exist. The images are the results of each artists’ activities; spending time in fragments of fancied stories, picking up brushes, and facing canvas. The emerged monsters’ backgrounds or situations are not told. They leave interpretations of the scenes to audiences.

Could be it be a hero knocking down a monster? Would it be a moment you encountered a goblin? Might it be braves having become portraits? What are the relation between the heroes and the monsters? What are the meaning of the fights and the poses? It seems pretty meaningless to ask the artists for the answers. Not asking might be a rule you must keep at the exhibition — as if it was a stratagem plotted by Kenichiro Mizuno, the mastermind.

During the show, Calm & Punk Gallery will turn to a sleazy bar where aliens of diversity hang out just as some scenes from science-fiction movies. Guests are also programmed to share these vibrations, becoming a monster of a kind themselves.

Is it the painters intentionally giving fantasies images so that it would give monsters shelter? Or is it the monsters possessing the artists so that they could expose themselves by getting painted? It is needless to say; anytime in the history, monsters have been garrulous and stubborn. Maybe.

Shinjiro Nishino
Calm & Punk Gallery

Kenichiro Mizuno
Born in Gifu prefecture in 1967, now a Tokyo resident Minuzo dropped out Department of Social Development System Engineering, Faculty of Engineering at University of Tottori and graduated from Setsu Mode Seminar. In pursuit of a sense of super-spatiotemporal that exists between déjà vu and jamais vu, he reconstructs in his head the world of TV animation that remains as an origin of his perspective, outputting creation in wide arrays of methods such as drawings, paintings, graphics, animation and so on. He also participates in a video production team Chojo Gensho [Supernatural Phenomenon] and an art unit Saiko Kinenshitsu [Supreme Memorial Room.] He teaches Paintings, Beauty, Pictures, and Manners at Bigakko [Tokyo’s school for movies and art.] He is a part-time lecturer at Visual Media Dep’t, Tohoku University of Art and Design.
His blog Mai Fai (working title)is : http://kenichiromizuno.blogspot.jp/

Motohiro Hayakawa
Sprung from Yamaguchi prefecture in 1974, Hayakawa graduated from Yamaguchi College of Arts. In 2000, he started his career as an illustrator, based in Tokyo. Recently, his aggressive activities ranging from exhibitions to live paintings all over Japan and beyond are evaluated highly especially in France, Spain, and other countries. Not to mention the exhibitions held abroad, his books of paintings were internationally published, too; foreign art scenes also have high hopes for him.

Masanori Ushiki
Coming from Niigata prefecture, Ushiki, a 1986er, resides in Tokyo after graduating from Basic Design Dep’t, Musashino Art University. A subtle drive to fight equipped only in young boys. And a yearning for futuristic things represented by their love of vehicles and robots implying speed, impersonality, and light. Ushiki focuses on culture of baby boys symbolized by Japanese tokusatsu [special-effects monster movies], anime, or manga and so on that have been satisfied simple desires essentially set in male infants in order to draw pictures, based on his childhood experience and relation with his son.
http://www.ushikima.com/

Makito Takagi
Shizuoka-born (1986) Takagi has settled in Tokyo. After graduation from Oil Painting Course, Dep’t of Painting, Tama Art University, he works for an art production company, along with activities as a painter and an illustrator. His most famous works include Snap, a series of pictures that resemble photography taken with flash.
http://makitotakagi.web.fc2.com