Gallery EXIT is pleased to present Charis, the first solo exhibition of Makoto Fujimura in Hong Kong. The center piece Charis is a monumental gold composition over 3 meters in width which shows the significance of Fujimura's most powerful work. "Charis" is the Greek word that St. Paul used for "grace," shorthand for the word "charisma," which means gift. Art is a gift, and essentially, art is grace. The more Fujimura journeys deeply into the effects of gold and mineral pigments, the more he is taken by the refractive possibilities of the materials, while at the same time, drawing us into the glory built into them.

Makoto FUJIMURA was born in 1960 in Boston, Massachusetts. He received a M.F.A. from Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music with a Japanese Governmental Scholarship in 1989. His thesis painting was purchased by the University and he was invited to study in the Japanese Painting Doctorate program, a first for an outsider to this prestigious traditional program.

It was during the six and a half years of studying in Japan that Fujimura began to assimilate the combinations of abstract expressionism explored in the US with the traditional Japanese art of Nihonga. After 20 years as a successful artist in Japan and the U.S., Fujimura has become a voice of bi-cultural authority on the nature and cultural assessment of beauty, by both creating it and exploring its forms. His paintings address the creative process and explore what it means to see. The work moves the observer from cognitive categorization to visceral experience.