Commemoration of Publication SUGANO Yumiko – Boundary Crossing –

To commemorate the publication of SUGANO Yumiko – Boundary Crossing –, Galerie Tokyo Humanité is pleased to present SUGANO Yumiko’s solo exhibition of new paintings. Sugano paints containers which she collected from different countries for years. Those containers stand calmly and quietly in her painting as if they are portraits of humans. In her recent paintings, the composition is more complex, depicting small spaces that appear to have been cut and pasted next to the full-scale containers that she usually paints. In addition, a midsummer-like blue sky and clouds are depicted beyond a window-like cutout of the darkness in the new paintings for the first time.

An image of the sky has been in the back of my mind for more than a decade. Something inside myself, however, could not catch up with it, and I gave up on it with an awkward feeling.
That sky finally revealed itself.
It was unexpectedly vivid, and it strongly attracted my mind. It was as if everything in the room was being drawn into that sky.
The sky is much brighter than I thought. I wonder where this sky is leading to.
SUGANO Yumiko

Sugano (b. 1960) received her B.A. in Painting from Tokyo Zokei University in 1986. She participated Biennale Sydney (1986), Asian Art Show (1989, Fukuoka Art Museum, the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, Yokohama Museum of Art), and many other exhibitions around the world. Her conceptual sculptures and installation works were highly acclaimed, however, the solo exhibition in 1992 became the last exhibition. In 2007, she had her first solo exhibition in 15 years showcasing classical still-life paintings of containers.