”Where is Alice?”

牧かほり ドローイング展
May. 06, 2022

Maki Kahori Drawing Exhibition "Where is Alice?"

Friday, May 20 ~ Wednesday, May 25 2022

5月20日(金)から5月25日(水)まで、渋谷 YUGEN Galleryにて、牧かほり ドローイング展 "Where is Alice?" を開催します。
Maki Kahori's drawing exhibition "Where is Alice?" will be held at YUGEN Gallery in Shibuya, Tokyo from May 20 to May 25.

YUGEN Gallery
東京都渋谷区渋谷2-12-19 東建インターナショナルビル3F
平日14:00 ~ 19:00 土日 13:00 ~ 19:00

Token International Bldg. 3F, 2-12-19 Shibuya, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo
Weekdays 14:00 ~ 19:00, Sat and Sun 13:00 ~ 19:00

【YUGEN Gallery web site】
https://yugen-gallery.com/ja/


牧かほり ドローイング展 "Where is Alice?"

【YUGEN Gallery】不思議の国へ没入する展覧会

Appleなど国内外で数多くのコラボレーションを手がけるグラフィックアーティスト牧かほりによる作家初のアナログオンリーの作品展「Where is Alice? ーアリスはどこに?」を開催します。

牧かほりは"一枚の絵から立ち上がるプロダクト、スペース、&ワーズ"を制作の核とし、広告をはじめファッションやスポーツブランドのテキスタイル、企業や高級ホテルなどの空間デザインまでを手がけるグラフィックアーティストです。

南国に咲く大きなシェイプの花を思わせ、観る者の細胞を活性化させるようなビビッドな作風で知られる牧ですが、今回は鉛筆によるドローイング作品のみを発表。きっかけとなったのは2年前から断続的に発令された緊急事態宣言。画材屋も印刷屋も営業活動ができず自身のアトリエにあるものだけで制作しなければならない状況で、手元にあった大量のクラフト紙に鉛筆でドローイングをし続けてきました。

外に一歩も出られない事態に多くの人と同じように不安を抱きながらも、ただただ手を動かす中で生まれてくる曲線の重なり。その線の重なりから「これまで描いてこなかった人の目や瞳を意識するようになり、自然と生きものや、それらしきものを多く描くようになった」と話します。そこから、かつてテーマとして取り組んだものの未完に終わった『不思議の国のアリス』の世界を紐解いてみたいと思ったのが本展のきっかけとなります。

本展では、2年間描き溜めたものと今回のために描き下ろした作品に加え、ギャラリーの壁一面を使って会場設営の際に直接ドローイングをする壁画作品も登場。これら約30点の作品には牧の特徴でもある曲線から抜け出すように現れた鳥やうさぎ、そして誰も知らない、でもどこかには存在するらしきものが描かれています。空間デザインを多く手がけ、「空間から絵を発想する」インスタレーションも得意とする牧ならではの作品群を前にして、観る者は不思議の国への没入感が得られることでしょう。

不条理な世界に思いがけず滑り落ちてしまうことを、まさに今私たちは感じています。行く先々が変な場所で、出会う誰もが理解しがたい言動をとる動物ばかりのアリスの世界は仮想の世界といえるのか?今注目を集めるメタバースという仮想空間。そこからすると効率は悪く、進みが遅い現実世界。その両方を覗く私たちはどこにいて、どこに向かうのか。

アップルやAdobe Systems inc.とのコラボレーションも手がけるなど、これまで全ての作品をデジタルフィニッシュしてきた牧が、いわば解像度の低い鉛筆のドローイングで新しい世界を見つけ出したことは示唆に富ます。

「今もって混沌の世界の中にいる私たち。重なり続ける線の中に意志を持つこと、委ねること、そして面白みや豊かさや可能性を見つけてもらいたい」と牧は話します。彼女のドローイングの線を追いかけるようにして辿り着く、新しい世界への没入感をお楽しみください。

本田賢一朗

Maki Kahori Drawing Exhibition "Where is Alice?"

YUGEN Gallery An exhibition that immerses you in a wonderland
Alice is not anywhere but "here".

Graphic artist Maki Kahori will be holding her first all-drawing exhibition, "Where is Alice?".

Maki's core work is "products, spaces, and words that emerge from a single drawing. After graduating from Nihon University College of Art, Maki moved to the United States to study fine art in New York. After returning to Japan, she began her career as an illustrator and has worked on advertising, fashion, textiles for sports brands, and space design for corporations and hotels. With a father who is a painter, she decided at an early age to make a living by painting. Influenced by her mother, a flower arrangement teacher, she often painted "gorgeous and energetic things," such as flowers and plants, which are similar to her current works.

Drawings that continued during anxious days

Maki says that at the root of her work, she is attracted to the world of monochrome, such as the shades of ink. Maki's vivid worldview, which is now known both in Japan and abroad as something that activates the viewer's cells, was inspired by the Great East Japan Earthquake. She began to paint works reminiscent of largely shaped, tropical flowers, saying, "many people are looking for something gentle and glamorous, and I want to depict a bright world." Maki further explains that the curves that characterize her work are drawn to and represent those of flowers and plants.

The drawings she will be presenting this time are of the same type. "Two years ago, when the state of emergency was declared and all art supplies and printing shops were closed, I had to work only with what I had in my studio, which was a large amount of kraft paper. I continued to draw with pencil on thin paper, which was originally used to protect the works," Maki explains the story that led to this exhibition.

Also, unable to print large-size works, she found that when she used the printer in her studio to print out her drawings in A3-size portions and then randomly joined these parts together, a single picture emerged that she had never expected. Maki's production style, in which she does not draw toward a clear image but connects what comes out by moving her body, and draws as if responding to the world that appears as she moves her hands, has led to a new technique called wall collage.

Overlapping curves started to emerge as she simply moved her hands with the anxiety that everyone has felt in the "days of loving the landscape, painting it, and trying to solve the mystery by moving away from it." The new shapes that these overlapping curves create have emerged as a new motif in Maki's work.

The eye that sees reality and the eye that sees the inner world

In the face of the global spread of infectious diseases, I was anxious and searching for where we were headed, and I became aware of eyes and pupils that I had never painted before.

Maki says that she has never been good at expressing her intentions clearly and has never liked drawing eyes. During the emergency period, she says, she began to see intense images of people's faces and eyes that she had never drawn before. Maki describes them as "eyes that see reality" and "eyes that see their own inner selves.

The rabbit symbolizes the creature that emerged as Maki immersed herself in the time-space created by the overlapping lines. This led Maki to the world of Alice in Wonderland, which she had previously worked on as a theme but never completed. For Maki, drawing became a daily search for Alice.

In this exhibition, in addition to the drawings Maki has made over the past two years and new works, there will also be a wall painting, in which Maki draws directly on the entire wall of the gallery while setting up the exhibition space. These 30 works depict birds and rabbits that seem to escape from the curves that characterize Maki's work, as well as things that no one knows, but that seem to exist somewhere.

Maki, who has designed many spaces and specializes in installations in which she "conceives of a picture from a space," has created a series of curves in her drawings that overlap with the "caucus race," a race in which Alice and her friends spin in a circle, and the audience is transported into Alice's world. The audience will feel as if they are slipping and sliding into Alice's world.

Searching for a new world that exists nowhere else.

Now we are blissfully close to slipping unexpectedly into an absurd world. Is Alice's world a virtual world, where every place she goes is a strange place and everyone she meets is full of animals that say and do incomprehensible things?

There are infinite possibilities in creation, and people are capable of creating so many new worlds. Maki says that it is the mission of an artist to show this. Maki says that even as her life, which she took for granted, was turned upside down, she searched with what she had on hand, and even so, "I was able to create a large number of works. This is the same Alice who realized how nonsensical it was to think that life could go on in the usual way. And we realize that Alice is ourselves.

As we explore new lifestyles and values, there is a lot of talk about metaverse as a parallel world that is distinct from the real world. How inefficient, slow-moving, and ambiguous the real world is from the virtual world, which seems to be able to overcome all the limitations of reality. Where are we, Alice, who look into the real and virtual worlds, and where are we headed?

"We are still in a world of chaos. I want us to will, to surrender, and to find fun, richness, and possibility in the overlapping lines."

It is also suggestive that Maki, who has collaborated with Apple and Adobe Systems inc. and has finished all of her works digitally, so to speak, has found a new world in low-resolution pencil drawings.

While keeping an eye on reality, a world of nowhere appears if one looks closely into one's own inner world. The new world that Maki found in her studio using only paper and pencil is "now here".

Kenichiro Honda


【YUGEN Gallery web site】
https://yugen-gallery.com/ja/


牧かほり ドローイング展
"Where is Alice?"

会期 : 5月20日(金) ~ 5月25日(水)
会場 : YUGEN Gallery
住所 : 東京都渋谷区渋谷2-12-19 東建インターナショナルビル3F
開館時間 : 平日14:00 ~ 19:00 土日 13:00 ~ 19:00


Maki Kahori Drawing Exhibition
"Where is Alice?"

Dates : Friday, May 20 ~ Wednesday, May 25
Venue : YUGEN Gallery
Address : Token International Bldg. 3F, 2-12-19 Shibuya, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo
Hours : Weekdays 14:00 ~ 19:00, Saturdays and Sundays 13:00 ~ 19:00

 YUGEN Gallery