The Future of Painting 2019 — FACE Award-Winning Artists Exhibition
The “FACE Exhibition” has established itself as a public competition for emerging artists.
This exhibition was held just before the 2019 FACE Exhibition, presenting the “now” of past award-winning artists.
This kind of follow-up initiative — not simply handing out the award and calling it done, but continuing to support the artists — is truly wonderful.
The show is a painting exhibition by eleven artists.
Below are my personal, subjective comments.
Mika Endo
A large-scale print work. A victory of scale. There is a sense of freedom, as if the motifs within the work have been set loose.
Nozomi Tojinbara
She dominates and controls the air within the canvas. The quality of her three-dimensional paper works is superb.
An artist who cannot be neatly filed away under the “aesthetic” category. I look forward to seeing what comes next.
Ayane Mikagi
She is thoroughly pursuing her own talent to its limits. Her graceful, beautiful depictions of women are likely to command steady support. An artist whose next step I want to see.
Reika Matsuda
Turning our gaze to society at large, we find the same thing: the moment we realize that the striped “lines” are not really lines, we begin to doubt our own vision and consciousness.
That said, I personally love stripes, so I was able to simply enjoy the work as well. There is a quality to the line itself.
Emiko Aoki
Three-dimensional works built on top of a canvas support. One could also read them as sculptures translated onto the plane. Perhaps there is no longer any need to categorize things as “flat” or “three-dimensional” at all.
Naho Oishi
Soft oil paintings with a gentle materiality. There is a tactile presence, yet at the same time an inorganic quality — as if the works give off no scent of oil paint at all.
Nobuyuki Ishibashi
Even though he works only with a ballpoint pen, he controls tonal gradation with striking precision. A work in which hidden craftsmanship seems to overflow.
Yusuke Sugita
When it comes to depicting “ma” — the interval, the space between — he may be second to none.
The interval is everything. Precisely because the work is small, its presence can be truly felt. An artist whose work I want to own.
Hiromi Sengoku
Perhaps this is a victory of composition. Every piece questions the importance of composition. Her sense of color is equally hat-tipping.
Misao Abe
It suddenly struck me — you don’t often see full-body portraits, do you? The motifs, which resonate with the sensibilities of contemporary women, are decidedly fashionable.
Yukari Inoue
Do the motifs of these landscapes exist in reality? Landscapes that feel as though they linger somewhere in memory may share a common thread that anyone can recall.
There were sixty works on display in total.
The overall level of the works was high, but almost every entry on the distributed list was credited as “Collection of the artist.”
Of the sixty works, only “three” had been handed over to a new owner.
Although many of the pieces were large in size, an artist’s recognition tends to grow when works are acquired by museums or collectors.
Commercial transactions inside a museum may be difficult, but I could not help thinking that some mechanism to help these artists keep making work would have made the whole initiative even better.
