【Genta Ishizuka ‘Primary Surface’ by ARTCOURT Gallery / Venue: Gallery L, CADAN YURAKUCHO】

Genta Ishizuka’s devoted pursuit of the possibilities of abstract form evokes an instinctive sense of physicality based on the membrane created by lacquer. Ishizuka gives form to the sap-derived material that resonates with its inherent nature and through the spatial composition of his Taxis series, which gives life to the dynamism intrinsic to the material’s lustrous surface, this exhibition will present a lineup of all new works that showcase his recent developments, which brim with vitality and have grown ever more captivating. We invite you for an evocative encounter with Ishizuka’s singular plastic expression, which captures the primordial beauty that emerges from natural material’s innate textures and phenomena.

// Artist Statement //
My fascination with the fetishistic texture of lacquer has inspired my artistic production. The ambigious depth and texture of the membrane achieved through the layered processes of applying and polishing lacquer allow me to project emotions and unconsciousness as well as a tactile corporeality through the expression of its nebulous surface.
(Genta Ishizuka)

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【Seishu Niihira by ARTCOURT Gallery / Venue: Gallery S, CADAN YURAKUCHO】

We are pleased to present new works by Seishu Niihira, who explores temporal and spatial expressions of painting with an experimental approach through themes of the passage of time and principles in optics layered onto our modern reality inundated with images and information. His Reflection series, which he has continued to create since the early stages of his career, depicts two contrasting images that erode one another, generating a noise-like interference. In his new works, Niihira’s motif is the generative process of portraiture-trained artificial intelligence through which he probes the duality of the contrasting aspects inherent in all things.

// Artist Statement //
In Buddhist terminology, the concept of ni-ni fu-ni suggests that opposing elements can coexist, like the front and back of a single sheet of paper or the qualities of good and evil within a single person. Similarly, in quantum mechanics, all things are said to possess both particle and wave properties. The idea that things can embody contradictory dualities resonates deeply with my own experiences and has become a central theme in my artistic practice.
　In my Reflection series, I overlapped two images as they reflected off and permeated through a windowpane, which merged into a single distorted composition. In this series, I have layered two AI-generated images trained on portraiture. Although not a stark binary opposition, the images are generated from the same training data but under different learning parameters, which allow for ‘alternative possibilities’ to confront one another. Human figures drift about within interfering waves of probability; this is what I see as a genuine portrait of the present.
（Seishu Niihira）