I visited Hikari Motoki’s solo exhibition “Casting Down the Light.” The venue was Gallery Art Morimoto, behind the Ginza Matsuya department store.
The intimate gallery held a total of 10 works. The first piece that catches the eye upon entering is the 100-go work Casting Down the Light, from which the exhibition takes its title.
I visited a few days into the run, and every work aside from Casting Down the Light above was already marked with a red “sold” sticker (one piece listed on the price sheet was left off the display because it was still unfinished). A clearly popular artist.
Although Motoki herself is a female artist, the expressions and gestures her female subjects display feel almost startlingly rendered from a masculine perspective.
Speaking in general terms from here on: realist portraits featuring young women appear to enjoy a solid base of strong support.
Broadly speaking, it is a market with few misses, and gallery interests too seem to have been leaning of late toward this readily saleable genre.
Within a female-realist genre that has something of a boom about it, the differentiating point becomes: what other elements does the work contain? Unless each artist can show something particular of their own, they risk being buried in the crowd.
It made for a viewing that left me mulling over the question: how will the market for this genre evolve from here?
