Youichi Umetsu was born in Yamagata prefecture in 1982. He is a promising young artist who won Second Prize at the“9th Annual Taro Okamoto Award for Contemporary Art”(2006) after graduating from the Department of Fine Arts at Tokyo Zokei University, and was selected for the VOCA 2009 exhibition (The Ueno Royal Museum). Though Umetsu's works are characterized by his unique style of using delicate, pointillistic strokes, his means of expression are diverse: his two-dimensional works, ranging from oil painting, metalpoint sketches drawn with sharpened metal, and pen drawings, are exhibited as elements of installation combined with objects from daily life. His main motifs are constructs that form his self, including self-portraits, portraits of relatives, and objects that have engendered strong emotional attachments.

Chihiro Mori was born in Osaka in 1978. After completing her Master's program in Painting at the Kyoto City University of Arts, Graduate School of Art, her activities have been notable with participation in“The Door into Summer: The Age of Micropop”exhibition (2007 / Art Tower Mito) and“Garden of Painting‒Japanese Art of the 00s”exhibition (2010 / The National Museum of Art, Osaka). She is recognized as an artist who will lead the next generation. Mori's style is also diverse, with three-dimensional pieces made of waste materials and daily objects, and two-dimensional pieces and drawings on paper or panels with watercolors, pencil and ink. Her pieces appear to be a distorted merging of the chaotic informational fragments that surround us. The viewing surfaces that have been intentionally deconstructed and reconstructed seem to open up new possibilities for painting.

The genesis for this exhibition was Umetsu Youichi's interest in Chihiro Mori's work. Umetsu planned this project, and invited Mori to participate. This exhibition is not based merely on a friendship between artists of the same generation, but instead, the driving force is their earnest desire to rethink and redefine“viewing”and“drawing”through the similarities and differences of their pieces.

* The text provided by ARATANIURANO

Opened dates: September 15 - October 16, 2010