Yu Hanabusa (born 1973, Kyoto) currently lives and works in Kyoto.

Yu Hanabusa recently completed a two year residency at Silpakorn University, Bangkok, Thailand, (2007 – 2009), supported by the Kyoto City Special Bounty Program for Art and Culture.

In the last few years she has creatively developed her interest in the complex relationship between Human beings and Nature, exploring the theme with bright, impressive colors and sumptuous, organic forms.

During the 2 year residency, Yu Hanabusa cultivated her own unique language of illusional images which she found during her daily life in Bangkok.

Her works often play with scale, for example shrinking architecture and expanding small Thai offering flowers in compositions of misleading forms. In this way the Artist attempts to capture her impressions of Bangkok as a mysterious and magical city.

In addition to oil painting, Yu Hanabusa also worked with great success on a variety of relief etchings and monotype prints, rich in their colour palette and very different to her water colours and oils.

In total, the exhibition at imura Art Gallery consists of 4 paintings and 18 prints, all originating from the Artist’s stay in Bangkok, and includes the outstanding work ‘Forest 2009’, from which the title of the show is taken ‘Forest’ captures well the mixed feelings experienced in the dense chaos of the Tropical Rain Forests of Thailand.

Running concurrently with the exhibition‘Forest’ is ‘SOTO-WO-IRERU’ – ‘Let the outside indoors’, at Kyoto Art Center until 13 June.

This exhibition consists of 7 paintings and 7 prints, shown in a traditional Japanese 78 tatami mat room.

Here Yu Hanabusa reproduces a scene from the Royal Palace of Bangkok, which she experienced daily during the residency.

* The text provided by Imura art gallery.

Opened dates: June 2 - June 26, 2010