AOYAMA|MEGURO is pleased to announce our first solo exhibition with artist Shinya Aota, opening on November 27th.
Born in Osaka in 1982, Aota is a graduate of the MFA program of Aichi Prefectural University of Fine Arts and Music (2008). He currently lives and works in Nagoya, after completing an artist-in-residence program at Edinburgh College of Art.
Aota is an emerging artist who has been very active in recent years. His work has been shown in "The 9th Gunma Biennale for Young Artists," The Museum of Modern Art, Gunma (2008), "HAPPA HOTEL," AOYAMA | MEGURO, Tokyo (organized by Schemata Architecture Office, Ltd., 2009), and most recently in "Aichi Triennale 2010," in which his installation took over the whole space of a room in a deserted house.

The works shown in this exhibition are a series of sculptures using readymade objects. All the surface of each object has been sanded, thus the essential information on what it originally was has been lost. In other words, there is a lack of clues that would otherwise lead you to the object's true identity, although the physical difference from their original state is actually very slight. Seeing each work is just like an accidental re-encounter with someone that you are sure you met before, yet whose name you cannot remember at all.

Above all, the colors and the textures, which have been hidden in each banal object yet are now revealed through the act of peeling their thin skin off, are wonderfully vivid and rich. Very close yet certainly different from the familiar, Aota's works offer a fresh, unlike-any-other visual experience.