Yuka Kashihara weaves her landscapes out of existing sceneries together with her inner imaginary space.

After graduating from Japanese painting course in Japan, Kashihara moved to Leipzig, Germany where she still lives and works. The city embraces many traces of the former East Germany and has led her to the thoughts of geographical and emotional distance between the place and her homeland. Her introspective explorations began to be expressed symbolically as nature motifs such as “mountain”, “cave”, “lake” and “forest”.

She creates richly nuanced atmosphere and harmony of colors by laying many thin layers of oil paint that is a combination of Japanese painting skill and oil painting technique that originates in West. Mr. Shuji Takashina, the Director of Ohara Mueum of Art remarks on Kashihara’s work as follows: “She finds her own path to the original expressions carrying two worlds, Japan and Germany, East and West. This is reflected in her unique style of putting many layers of thin paint. Although her work is classified as oil painting, it does not have the glutinous feature of Western oil painting. At the same time, her promising talent gazing the land with eyes nourished by the two traditions gives us greater hopes.”
(“Hon (Book)” November issue, Kodan-sha, 2012)

Concept 
This is Kashihara’s third solo exhibition at Tomio Koyama Gallery. In her solo exhibition “Amid” at the gallery in 2011, she created a cave-like image by paraphrasing the process of “searching the deviated amid of myself” to the act of “digging a hole”. Later having experienced the Great East Japan Earthquake during her temporal stay, she began to feel the nature, her main motif differently. “When I went into the usual forest, I felt like I was protected. As a matter of fact, I may have been protected all these years by what I was trying to protect. When I realized it, there was a sense of vector facing outward instead of pointing at the inner side of me.” (Yuka Kashihara, 2013).
The works conceived after those experiences were shown at her solo exhibition in 2012 “Transition”. The exhibition will feature 15 new works including 5 paintings that are over 2m. About this exhibition, she states,

There is a person I long to see. But I can’t. So instead, I decided to go to Hokkaido, the person’s homeland. Hokkaido somehow resembled Germany. Although it was my first visit to Hokkaido, the place was nostalgic. Nostalgic, yet unknown. When I was strolling through the forest, the peculiar shaped plants of the northland invited me in. This is how “Arrival” and “Sky Lake” in this exhibition were created. (Yuka Kashihara, 2013)

The exhibition title, “Repeating Traces” suggests a quiet resolution of the artist, who is determined to reach out for the present landscapes and the time, which are the accumulation of traces from the remote ages, by repetitious act of painting and erasing. Kashihara’s landscapes presented in this exhibition embrace more depth.

Courtesy of Tomio Koyama Gallery