Yutaka Watanabe paints scenes of peculiar structures, mixtures of the artificial and the natural. Watanabe states, "I grew up in Tokyo surrounded by manmade things, accepting the world I saw in front of me on TV as reality, preferring artificially colored food to natural food, and fascinated by supernatural phenomena, ghosts, monsters, unexplained occurrences, and the riddles of the ancients. Within the ordered life Ied growing up, I feasted my eyes on an overflowing chaos of color and information, and this past has become the foundation of my painting." (Excerpted from the Fuchu Biennial catalog.) In the Ark series (referring to both the boat and the place of refuge), previously shown at the Tomio Koyama Gallery, a void appears as if the wall of one building in the middle of a residential district suddenly collapsed; it is painted such that a mysterious composition arises, one in which the boundary between indoors and outdoors is blurred. Works that seem to repeat a wordless conversation, in which rectangular, bent plants and furniture commingle against the backdrop of a stage set house next door, are reminiscent of Futurist and Surrealist painting. After this, in the OO-PARTS（Out of Place Artifacts）series shown in the 2008 Fuchu Biennial, a more audacious motif is reconstructed: the more the depicted elements are weeded out, the structural relationship between the foremost structure and the background is brought to attention. The more we peer at the complicated, inscrutable scene Watanabe paints, combining unique colors far removed from the descriptive colors, we feel dejavu, confused by the branch-like thing dancing in the image, or the house-like thing lingering in the background. Concept:
Six new paintings are to be exhibited at this show. We hope you enjoy this further new challenge, as described by the artist, "In using a sense of interval as well as ebb and flow, I may be groping for a way of imparting strength. The images are composed of every possible element, and moreover, by causing them to fall apart, I am conducting a trial and error of the tense and the lax, sometimes as if causing dizziness." Artist Biography:
Yutaka Watanabe was born in Tokyo in 1981. In 2005, he graduated from Musashino Art University's College of Art and Design with a concentration in painting. In 2007, he received an M.F.A. in painting at the same university. In March 2008, he was selected to participate in the public subscription exhibition "WONDER SEEDS" (held at Tokyo Wonder Site shibuya). He participated in "the 4th Fuchu Biennial True Colors: Adventures of Colors" (Fuchu Art Museum, Tokyo) in 2008. This is his first solo show, following the "Nana Funo / Yutaka Watanabe" exhibition held at the Tomio Koyama Gallery in 2008. * The text provided by Tomio Koyama Gallery.