Takumi Saito / Momoko Yamada
December 20 - 26, 2024
Open： Friday 17:00 - 20:00
Sat. 11:00 - 20:00 / Sun. - Wed. 11:00 - 19:00
Free administration
Spiral garden (1st floor)
Organized by Wacoal Art Center Co.
Creative planning and production: Spiral
Takumi Saito
Born in Tokyo in 1996, Takumi Saito graduated from Musashino Art University's Department of Japanese Painting in 2018 and completed the Master of Fine Arts program in the Japanese Painting course at the same university in 2020. Since then, she has held numerous solo and group exhibitions in Tokyo.
Saito's works depict scenes of parks, playgrounds, landscapes glimpsed on the way home from school, solitary girls gazing into the distance within these landscapes, children playing with friends, and images of children seemingly cropped from photographs, all rendered in subtle tones. Through her art, Saito delves into the exploration of self-identity and subjectivity, reflecting deeply on the formation of the ego during childhood and interpersonal relationships. She projects her own experiences onto the figures of young girls while expressing emotions and sentiments that are often invisible but worthy of preservation. The girls in Saito's paintings inhabit a delicate space between innocence and maturity.
As Saito explains, "Many of my works depict moments where one feels a return to oneself amidst the routines of daily life, moments of honesty and liberation from constraints, distancing from societal norms." Her artworks capture fleeting moments of happiness and simple joys found within the mundane. As the exhibition's title suggests, we invite you to explore Saito's pieces, which offer new perspectives by capturing the subtle light that resonates with our inner selves.
Momoko Yamada
Momoko Yamada was born in 1995. She graduated from the Oil Painting Department of the Faculty of Fine Arts at Tokyo University of the Arts in 2021 and completed her M.A. in the Printmaking Research Field at the school in 2023. Yamada has received high praise since her student days, winning the Excellence Award at the National University Print Exhibition in 2020, and has been actively participating in solo and group exhibitions. This exhibition will showcase copperplate prints and cloisonné works, which Yamada has primarily worked on in the past.
Yamada identifies a commonality in her meticulous depiction within the limited space across different techniques of copperplate prints and cloisonné. Throughout her creative process, words and phrases emerge as she paints, evolving into new images, fostering narratives through this iterative process, and constructing unique settings and characters. The labor-intensive production process allows ample time for contemplation, enriching the depth of her works through the interplay of painting, words, and imagery.
In her works, Yamada portrays worlds governed by unique rules constructed from colors and shapes, inspired by real-life experiences. These worlds, unfolding narratives based on their own laws, diverge from the reality we know. Crafting alternate worlds brings joy to Yamada, offering her another realm of existence. Furthermore, her perspective of finding warmth in materials such as wood, glass, and metal evokes reminiscences of past times and people's lives, intending to depict the stories embedded within the materials themselves.
We invite you to explore the layered narratives woven within these small-scale works.
In the paintings, there are trees that eat horses, leaves shaped like birds, two girls diving into the sea, and creatures linking together to form sounds, creating a reality that's a bit different from our own.
I think each artwork is like a small planet with its own code.
Each one becomes "a certain star" and seems to exist freely within the rules of that star.