A Strolling Path
Emi Kuraya
May 5 – May 25, 2023
GALLERY HOURS :11:00 – 19:00
GALLERY CLOSED：SUNDAY, MONDAY
OPENING RECEPTION：
18:00〜20:00 May 5, 2023
※This exhibition is now concluded.
Thank you to all the many people who stopped by.
Kaikai Kiki Gallery is pleased to announce A Strolling Path, a solo exhibition by Emi Kuraya, Opening on May,5, 2023.
Emi Kuraya held her solo exhibition titled Inside Outside at Hidari Zingaro in 2018 while she was an art university student. A year later, she had her first solo exhibition at Kaikai Kiki Gallery. She has since showcased new works at various art fairs worldwide and, in 2021, held her first overseas solo exhibition, Window and Scales, in Seoul, followed by another, titled Long Vacation, in Shanghai the following year. Despite the challenges posed by the pandemic, Kuraya has continued to exhibit her works internationally.
While exhibiting an ever-growing body of work, Kuraya has been exploring new compositions, motifs, and expressions alongside her ongoing exploration of girls as her motif, which she began during her years in art university. Her recent repertoire includes the “Window” series featured in her solo exhibition in Seoul, with a unique composition that evokes cartoon speech-bubbles, as well as works featuring male characters she tackled for the first time for her Shanghai exhibition. Other notable series include photo collages, works based on old family photos, and paintings depicting young girls with stylized and character-like elements, among others.
This exhibition will feature 13 paintings and 25 drawings including works with new compositions that have not been seen in Kuraya’s previous works. Please look forward to it.
In conjunction with the exhibition, Partly Cloudy, Emi Kuraya’s first major art book, will be made available for presale at the gallery. In addition to a total of 90 paintings created between 2017 and 2022 while she was a university student, the book features approximately 380 drawings.
The book also includes a long, 9,000-word interview, in which she talks about her motivation for painting female images on canvas, reasons why she started to depict male subjects and couples in recent years, and her thoughts on painting, born out of her struggle to face herself, among other things.
The book will be officially available on Amazon around mid-May.
©2022 Emi Kuraya/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
MESSAGE FROM THE ARTIST
I paint to capture the moments that I may one day forget as though I am keeping a diary.
For me, painting is like a bridge between fluid memories.
The familiar paths that change their shapes a little every day and shifts in the thoughts I have in my head always inspire me to paint.
Emi Kuraya
