Shoko Fujimori
“Take the Helm of Yourself !”
January 16 (Sat), - February 13 (Sat), 2021
*We will not have an opening reception for the artist.
Open: Tuesday - Saturday 12:00 - 19:00
Closed on Sun., Mon. and National Holiday
We will be taking various countermeasures against the COVID-19 in consideration of the health and safety of the visitor and staff: ventilate as appropriate, clean space, the staffs are reminded to check their temperature daily, gargle, wash and sanitize their hands frequently so as to say mindful of their own health condition. We will limit the number of people in the gallery. Please wear a mask when you visit the gallery and maintain a social distance when you are in the gallery. If you are concerned with your physical condition, please refrain from entering the gallery.
We appreciate your kind understanding and cooperation in advance.
GALLERY MoMo Projects is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Shoko Fujimori entitled “Take the Helm of Yourself !” from Saturday, January 16th through Saturday, February 13th.
In the early works, Fujimori described humans covered with thin skin like film. Regardless of the age or sex, the viewers can see internal organs and blood vessels from the skins of the portraits. Fujimori chose the motifs that she could feel something that happened around her acutely from the skin.
In another series, Fujimori challenged to employ fashion as the second skin and depicted women wear fashionable costumes are more like mannequins than human beings. Fujimori positively expressed fashion and SNS as communication tools by using various motifs related to fashion such as mirrors and show window glass, and the images of photographs on social networking service.
Fujimori could not avoid the influence on the contents of paintings from the quarantined life due to the COVID-19. Since the disease cannot approach people, her point of view shifted to herself from others. She said that it was an opportunity to reconsider communication that is her main theme, and how she could express it. Having a lot of time to face herself, she was able to re-examine the reason why she aimed to be an artist.
In this exhibition, Fujimori will show new painting series that has used the theme of masterpieces that show a strong figure that confronts difficulties without giving up hope and suggest communication as the motif. She succeeded in being acquired a new expression from the masterpieces she was encouraged and creating with carefully layered that are signature of Fujimori.
Shoko Fujimori was born in 1986 in Hokkaido and received her MFA from Tokyo University of the Arts majoring in oil painting in 2013. In 2006 before she entered the university, Fujimori received the prize in Tokyo Wander Wall. She also won the prize of 2010 Gunma Biennale for Young Artists and nominated Sonpo Japan Art Prize in 2014.
Artist Comment
In the spring of 2020, we were forced to refrain from going out due to a pandemic that we never experienced before. I had to look back on the way of communication.
When I consider what I want to paint now, I reached the result of the fundamental motives for producing paintings naturally, such as living with people and wanting to leave them on the canvas and convey them to someone.
At the same time, I recalled my first visit to the Louvre Museum at the age of 17. It was the gift trip from my father who thought that it should be better to appreciate masterpieces early if I wanted to be a painter in the future. The large-scale painting, The Raft of the Medusa by Théodore Géricault, gave me a shock and particularly left impressive on my memory.
When I took the catalog I bought in the Louvre Museum and turned the pages, I found the nostalgic masterpieces pictures with paint stains and dog-ears I made when I was in high school. I remembered that I put the opened catalog at the feet of the easel for reference in my production. I believe that the origin of my aspiration for a painter was here. I felt that I received a great deal of power from myself of the past.
I think I could not create the painting, Take the Helm of Yourself!, inspired by The Raft of the Medusa if I did not experience the spring of 2020.
The small half-sunken boat that keeps sailing through a sea of uncertainties. People who have a big flag, sing at full power with hope, help their friends, and never give up until the end.
The characters in my paintings are anyone in this world.
Sometimes we have fun to play with people who spend time together in society such as family, lovers, friends, and colleagues, and sometimes bargain with them by reading their thoughts each other. I think that the danger, urgency, and such unbalanced status of minds that are never constant are all healthy humanity.
2021 Shoko Fujimori
1986 Born in Hokkaido, Japan
2011 B.F.A., Tokyo University of the Arts
2013 M.F.A., Tokyo University of the Arts（Master of Fine Art, Painting course ）
[Solo exhibitions]
2019 GALLERY MoMo Ryogoku, Tokyo
2017 GALLERY MoMo Ryogoku, Tokyo
2015 GALLERY MoMo Ryogoku, Tokyo
2012 Gallery Jin Esprit＋, Tokyo
2011 Gallery Jin Projects, Tokyo
2010 Gallery Forest, Tokyo
2009 Gallery Ginza Forest, Tokyo
[Group exhibitions]
2015 "Beginning from Keiichiro Kume ─ Medical Art & Illustration of the History and the Present" Tokyo University of the Arts, Tokyo
2014 "The 20 hanging scrolls worked on KADODE Japanese paper -To face the Japanese paper, To know the Japanese paper-" Koshinokigami Kobo Gallery, Niigata
"Sompo Japan Art Award Exhibition FACE 2014" Seiji Togo Memorial Sompo Japan Museum of Art, Tokyo
2012 "JIGOKU NO HINKAKU" Tokyo University of the Arts, Tokyo
2011 "GEIDAI TAITO SUMIDA Sightseeing Art Project2011 SUMIDAGAWA SHIN MEISHO MONOGATARI2011” Sumida Park Riverside gallery, Tokyo
2010 "via art2010" Shinwa Art Museum, Tokyo
"Entrance Fee - drawings by emerging artists" Art Market Whole, Tokyo
"Tokyo Art Meeting Transformation TOKYO GEIDAI TRANS WEEKS" Tokyo University of the Arts, Tokyo
"The 10th Gunmma Biennale for Young Artists2010" The Museum of Modern Art, Gunma
2009 "Tokyo Print Exhibition x Auction from" Tokyo University of the Arts, Tokyo
2008 "Mifuyuzuki" ART FRONTIER, Tokyo
"École de Shibuya" NHK
2006 "TOKYO WONDER WALL 2006" MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART TOKYO, Tokyo
[Awards]
2011 Mr.O Memorial Prize at "Graduation Work at Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music"
2010 Wada Fine Arts Prize at "via art2010"
2009 Megumi Tateshima Prize at "via art2010"
[Public Collections]
Japigozzi collection
