GALLERY MoMo

GALLERY MoMo Projects (Roppongi) is pleased to present endless, a solo exhibition by Yoshiko Fukushima, from Saturday, November 14 to Saturday, December 19, 2026.

Born in Nagano Prefecture in 1985, Yoshiko Fukushima graduated from the Department of Oil Painting at Musashino Art University in 2009. While still a student, she received a Jurors’ Award at the Shell Art Award exhibition in 2006 and the Grand Prix of the same award in 2007. In 2014, she illustrated a current-affairs column for the Shinano Mainichi Shimbun. Her work was also chosen for the cover of the Japanese edition of To Hyun-nam Oppa, an anthology of Korean feminist fiction. Her paintings are held in collections including the Pigozzi Collection and the Benetton Foundation.

From the beginning of her career, Fukushima has centered her practice on the human figure. In portraits and multi-figure compositions rendered in somewhat subdued tones, she has developed a distinctive approach to depicting people. The colors she applies to her figures’ faces are as varied as their expressions. Their singular gazes at times laid bare a profound inner life, confronting viewers with an intensity that could feel almost piercing.

After the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011, Fukushima’s mind filled with concerns about the future, and these came to be reflected in the motif of children. Over time, she moved away from the expression of her own emotions and inner life that marked her early work. She began instead to paint portraits drawn from past memories, faces of “someone, somewhere.” This exhibition presents new works created by reconstructing such layered images.

In Japan it has long been said that a person’s face reveals how they have lived. The word ninso, physiognomy or the reading of faces, captures this idea: even with strangers, we unconsciously try to read character and personal history from a face. The faces Fukushima paints carry this same trace of lived experience.

Yet these faces are not painted from a single sitter. They take shape as the likenesses of people Fukushima has encountered and scenes that have stayed with her blend together. As she paints, she imagines what kind of days each person might have lived, and gradually brings it all together into a single face. Because many lives overlap within it, the more we try to read such a face, the less it settles into one answer. It feels strangely familiar though we are seeing it for the first time, and yet it cannot be pinned down as anyone in particular. This is the source of the mysterious presence of Fukushima’s figures.

 

The title endless seems to suggest memories being passed back and forth between painter and viewer, endlessly renewed. We warmly invite you to view new works by Yoshiko Fukushima at the gallery.

 

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Artist Comment

I mainly paint pictures in which people appear.

 

When I paint, I reconstruct memory, linking together the chains of images that arise from what I remember.

 

Remembering is a complex process, and even people who shared the same experience recall it differently. I value imagining those many different perspectives. Events that tend to stay fixed in memory, such as psychological shocks or striking scents and sounds, are also themes in my work.

 

When I paint a portrait, I draw a figure that fits the theme out of the drawers of my memory. I imagine what kind of life that person is living, and paint while reconstructing multiple images. Beneath each figure that emerges lie many accumulated layers of memory.

 

— Yoshiko Fukushima

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[Brief Chronology]    
1985    Born in Nagano, Japan
2009    B.A Musashino Art University(oil painting department)
   
[Solo exhibition]    
2026    GALLERY MoMo Projects, Tokyo
2022    GALLERY MoMo Ryogoku, Tokyo
   　　 GALLERY MoMo Projects, Tokyo
2016    GALLERY MoMo Ryogoku, Tokyo
2014    GALLERY MoMo Ryogoku, Tokyo
2011    GALLERY MoMo Roppongi,Tokyo 
2010     MARUZEN Nihonbashi,Tokyo
    　　GALLERY MoMo Ryogoku,Tokyo
2009    GALLERY MoMo Ryogoku,Tokyo
   　　 GALLERY MoMo Roppongi,Tokyo 
2008    Gallery MoMo ,Tokyo
   
[Group exhibition]    
2024    "Back to the Past Memories" GALLERY MoMo Projects, Tokyo
   　　 "Next" HOKUTO Culture Hall, Nagano
2020    "Gallery Show" GALLERY MoMo Projects, Tokyo
   　　 "Paper Works" GALLERY MoMo Projects, Tokyo
  　　  "Reflection"   GALLERY MoMo Ryogoku, Tokyo
2018    "Imaginary Family" GALLERY MoMo Projects, Tokyo
2013    "IMAGO MUNDI" Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Firenze, Italy
2012    "NAGANO Shin CONCEPTUS", Shiga Kogen Roman Museum, Nagano
   　　 "Summer Group Show" Gallery MoMo Projects, Tokyo
2011    "Regenerate" GALLERY MoMo Ryogoku, Tokyo
  　　  "GYOSYO - The Gallery Circus -" Spiral Garden, Tokyo
2010    "Visage vol.2" GALLERY MoMo Ryogoku, Tokyo
2009    "Summer Hop Step Jump"  GALLERY MoMo Roppongi, Tokyo
2008    "Shell Art Award 2007"  Kyoto Municipal Museum Of Art, Kyoto
  　　  "Opning Exhibition"   GALLERY MoMo Ryogoku, Tokyo
2007    "fore runners ＆ hour eggs"  Gallery MoMo, Tokyo
　　   "Shinjuku Art Infinity"   Maruicitiy Building, Tokyo
   　　 "Shell Art Award 2007"  Daikanyama Hill Side Forum, Tokyo
2006    "Shell Art Award 2006"  Daikanyama Hill Side Forum, Tokyo
   
[Awrds]    
2008    Grand Prize at "JASSO's Student of the Year 2008"
2007    Won a prize of "Shinjuku Art Infinity" 
  　　  Grand Prize at "Shell Art Award 2007" 
  　　  Encouragement Prize at "JASSO's Student of the Year 2007"
2006    Mika Kuraya Judges' Prize at "Shell Art Award 2006"
   
[Awrds]    
The Jean Pigozzi Collection
Imago Mundi Collection