YAMAMOTO GENDAI is pleased to announce Wabi Sabi Utopia, a solo exhibition by Erina Matsui opening on August 25, 2012.

Erina Matsui consistently favors her own face as a central motif in her paintings, and has been exploring and expanding the category of self-portrait. Her face is often comically distorted, and stretched to merge into the ocean, the forest or the sky in the background as if the artist attempts to capture the world surrounding herself in the portrayal of her extended self-portrait. Little toys and cute characters sprinkled all over the canvas instantly catch our attention, and we soon realize ourselves drawn into the spectacles of her unique vision. These elements are the tricks that Matsui has carefully incorporated in the painting to approach the audience. According to the artist, her works are the means of communication made possible by sharing a certain experience with the viewer.

Matsui made an dazzling debut and received instant recognition in the international art scene, with a gold prize at GEISAI#6 for her I love shrimp chili, which she completed at the age of twenty in 2003, and selection of the work for a group exhibition at Foundation Cartier pour l’art contamporain Paris in 2005. Over the following 7 years, she has participated in a number of exhibitions inside and outside the country, and her activities have expanded beyond painting to corporate collaborations and curation of an exhibition Girlfriends Forever! (2010) .

At the beginning of this year, her solo exhibition Sunrise Erina was held at Ohara Museum of Art in her native Okayama prefecture. The artist was highly devoted in this exhibition, making a large scale painting with accompanying papier-mache frame made in reference to the painter Torajiro Kojima, who made significant contribution in building the extensive Ohara collection and would make papier-mache frames for his own works. Matsui also challenged El Greco’s Annunciation by confronting her own self-portrait in front of the masterpiece across the exhibition hall. This exhibition ended with success and much attention for her enthusiastic engagement for her first major show in her hometown.

This coming exhibition Wabi Sabi Utopia will consist of selected works from the Ohara Museum show to be exhibited for the first time in Tokyo, and several new pieces including a large self-portrait with her face on an octopus and several ceramic works, in her signature mixed media installation.