Mizuma & One Gallery is pleased to present a group show titled Seven Dilemmas on December 10, 2011, featuring seven Japanese young artists, namely, HINO Korehiko, KANEKO Tomiyuki, KYOTARO, MIYAZAKI Yujiro, OSHIMA Kozue, SASHIE Masakatsu, and YAMAMOTO Ryuki.

HINO depicts human facial expressions in exaggerated ways, especially the astonished eyes, as if innocent children were surprised at the sight of a world driven by rapid economic growth. No matter what variegated responses we as viewers may have toward his works, there is no way for us to escape. For the works really reflect down-to-earth reality, we are confronted with a world as strange and remote as it has been so familiar to us.

Unlike HINO's realistic style, KANEKO and KYOTARO portray mythological spirits, monsters, and demons. Both of them are obsessed with myths and have managed to present some of the images on canvass so vividly.

MIYAZAKI's work, titled Water Dragon, transports the viewers into a wonderful underwater world filled with oceanic living creatures and even the Mount Fuji, an admirable accomplishment of imagination indeed.

OSHIMA has taken keen interest in the wonders of nature ever since childhood. Insects and plants are all objects of her observation, and the oft-unnoticed details arouse her tremendous curiosity. "In a grain of sand there is a world, and in a flower there is a paradise." By following OSHIMA's nuanced details, the viewers may discover the secrets of the vast universe.

For SASHIE, urban landscapes are of greater interest. The barber's store, telephone booth, and small convenient store, as have been so familiar in the mundane Japanese life, are floating in the image as captured in miniature spheres. Lower in the image, there are all kinds of scraps and wastes, with skyscrapers in the background, a symbol of "modernized society." The tempo-spatial mismatching of the past and the present is looming large.

YAMAMOTO is known for his self-portraits. The works on show are the outcome of his sojourning in Beijing (from April 2011 to the present) with the same self-portrait approach. All the portraits are imbued with rich sentiments and delicate touches, each image being a piece of YAMAMOTO himself crystallized, as if he were living in a world all by himself, nobody else but many YAMAMOTOs.

The seven artists were all born in the 1970s, yet each of them has shown a unique approach to the meanings of the world. Through our eyes, we may encounter seven different modes of attitudes, reflection, and questioning.