Base Gallery is pleased to present "UNITED COLORS," a solo exhibition of new works by Shinya Sakurai.

After majoring in dyeing at Osaka University of Arts, Sakurai had started making flat surface artworks and continuously worked on them along with what he learned and acquired while being at the university. A part of his unique expression can be seen in the support medium with dyed cotton cloth on and the velvet with a quantity of pigments and vinyl resin paints lapped over. What he does seems to go beyond just the drawing and painting. It is rather precise to consider it as sinking above mentioned materials into the support mediums voluptuously.

Since enrolling in Accademia Albertina delle Belle Arti di Torino in 2004, he has been living in Torino, and he has been asked and queried about Hiroshima where he is originally from every now and then. Though never being really conscious about Hiroshima before, the experience of repeatedly being asked and queried about it brought him a momentum to have another look at his own expression as an artist since he felt a mound of misperception and disconnect there. Then, asking himself by using the denotations of common factors has become the core of his expression. Heart mark is one of them.

While having shown the artworks with familiar denotations or symbols and done a number of exhibitions at various places in Europa, he has come to realize each place has its own Hiroshima. For the new works at this exhibition, Sakurai uses something Italian as denotations such as catholic cross and medaille or button in mode. As he adopts the denotations that are familiar with the unquestioned daily life, diversified but unique forms of catholic and mode emerge in respective viewers.

What he studied at the university and his home town Hiroshima started to function as the momentum to think over himself after choosing Italy as the place to live and work. However, regardless of these queries and verifications, each artwork has erotic glaze and overlaps of weighty colors. They create an illusion as if each one of them is a certain part of his own flesh and blood and gives off an odor of his body.