ANDO GALLERY is pleased to announce "Quercus", an exhibition of new paintings by Aoi Sasai.

Sasai was born in Kanagawa in 1986, and graduated from the Graduate School of Art and Design, Musashino Art University, with a Master's degree in Painting. In the exhibition "Joint Graduation Exhibition of 5 Art Universities in Tokyo" at The National Art Center, Tokyo in 2011, Sasai received attention for a painting which depicted two humorously-shaped trees blowing in the wind, against a grey background suggestive of disquiet.

The motifs chosen and depicted by Sasai are rooted in scenes she has encountered in her daily life. The image of the new painting "Laurales" is based on an unforgettable memory from her childhood: pale-toned trees she saw from a moving car on an expressway in the USA, which seemed like "candy floss". Those trees, in fact, were completely covered in spider webs. That odd sight is still embedded in her memory. Another painting "Myrica" was painted in the motif of the hedges surrounding houses in a residential neighborhood. Among all varieties of trees, Sasai is more concerned with planted trees such as hedges that have functions to keep private area from others' eyes, or to indicate the confines of a premises.

"It is a sort of boundary existing between myself and the outside world, and it always underlies deep inside me."

From the artists' remark, we can presume that the trees in her paintings stand on the demarcation line between "this world" and "the other world", and are presented as symbols of boundaries.

This exhibition of new works, which will be the first solo show for Sasai, presents approximately six oil paintings and three drawings by this young, promising artist.