Biography
Masayuki Arai

WITH HIS PROCESS OF CAPTURING REPRESENTATIONS OF REALITY 'AS PAINTINGS', ARAI TRANSFORMS THE UNITS AND FORMS OF THE USE OF PAINT ITSELF. THE PAINTINGS, CREATED BY DRIPPING PAINT FROM A SYRINGE, MOVE BACK AND FORTH BETWEEN IMAGE AND PHYSICAL MATTER DEPENDING ON THE DISTANCE FROM WHICH THEY ARE VIEWED.

Masayuki Arai was born in 1984 in Wisconsin and currently lives and works in Ibaraki Prefecture, Kanto region, Japan. He completed the Master of Fine Arts course at the Aichi Prefectural University of Fine Arts and Music in 2011 and his works were exhibited at the 2013 Aichi Triennial and the 2014 VOCA. His working process has always involved printing and pasting images collected from the Internet onto a canvas and then expanding them in imaginative ways. This exhibition will present some of Arai's most recent works.
 
In recent years, Arai has started to peel off the photographs that were pasted onto the canvas, leaving the outer imagined, painted parts intact. In repeating this action, pasting new photographs onto it and then drawing and extending the outer parts, the image becomes entangled and layered. With his process of capturing the representations of reality “like paintings” Arai transforms the units and forms of the use of the paint itself. The paintings, created by dripping paint from a syringe, move back and forth between image and physical matter depending on the distance from which they are viewed. This gives a sense of reality to the supposedly fictional images.
Arai does not talk much about the photographs used in his work. The viewer is left to imagine what the stripped photographs looked like and from where the scenes depicted in the paintings follow on, without ever knowing their starting point. The absence of the photographs that constituted the starting points for the paintings, and the build- up of the painted depictions that remain on the canvas remind us of the complex relationship between what we accumulate and share every day in the real world, and at the same time highlight their ambiguity.
Exhibitions
Works
Solo & Group Show
Masayuki Arai

Masayuki Arai CV

 Born in 1984 in Wisconsin (Japan).

 

EXHIBITIONS

Solo Show

2023

Like Paintings, Primo Marella Gallery, Lugano, Switzerland

2021 

Like paintings, STANDING PINE, Aichi, Japan

2019

Warped horizon, STANDING PINE, Aichi, Japan

2016

Vanilla:, STANDING PINE, Aichi, Japan

2011

Picture picture, YEBISU ART LABO, Aichi, Japan

 

Group Show

2024

Artissima, Turin, Italy

2023

Artissima, Turin, Italy

2021

'STUDIO KODAI vol.2' CAPSULE, Tokyo, Japan

2019

KIAF ART SEOUL 2019, COEX Hall A&B, Seoul, South Korea
ART BUSAN 2019 INTERNATIONAL ART FAIR, BEXCO, Busan, South Korea

2018

ART021 SHANGHAI CONTEMPORARY ART FAIR, Shanghai Exhibition Center, Shanghai, Japan

2017

objet d`art on the way to the Future, Annex Ninigi, Kyoto, Japan

2016

INTERWOVEN, Nagoya Citizen`s Gallery Yada, Aichi, Japan

2015

Slice Pack, Gallery 16, Kyoto, Japan
On the Way to the Future, and Then : 11 Newcomers of Art, Craft and Design, Kyoto Institute of Technology, Kyoto, Japan
Spring Painting Art Show, STANDING PINE, Aichi, Japan

2014

VOCA 2014 - The Vision of Contemporary Art -, The Ueno Royal Museum, Tokyo, Japan
Spring Painting Art Show, STANDING PINE, Aichi, Japan
Lagrangian Point, Gallery PARC, Kyoto, Japan

2013 AICHI TRIENNALE 2013, Nayabashi Site, Aichi, Japan
Summer Drawing Show, Gallery Side 2, Tokyo, Japan
 relational map, STANDING PINE, Aichi, Japan

2012

UTSUSU - Copying and Shifting -, Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art (Gallery), Aichi, Japan
UTSUSU - Copying and Shifting -, florist_gallery N, Aichi, Japan

2011

Dreaming the World (MEGI HOUSE 2011 vol.12), Kagawa, Japan

 

Art Fairs