Seeing With Myself

Makiko Kudo, Seeing With Myself, 2025, Oil on canvas, 193.7 x 259.0 cm. Courtesy of the Artist and Tomio Koyama Gallery.

 

Tomio Koyama Gallery Kyobashi is pleased to announce the exhibition “Seeing With Myself” by Makiko Kudo. This exhibition marks the artist’s seventh solo exhibition at the gallery and her first in three years. It will also be her first solo exhibition at the Kyobashi space, where she will present new paintings and drawings.

【About Makiko Kudo and her work: a delicate sensibility depicting a unique sense of the everyday that seems to radiate with a grand narrative】

When asked about her creative process in a conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist (director of the Serpentine Gallery in London, curator, and art critic), Kudo stated the following.

“There are moments when something I pass by suddenly appears to shine; I don’t know if it’s to do with the amount of light, but the scene combines with my mood at the time to make an especially strong impression, and those are the moments I make into pictures. Other times, the box in my head is full of all kinds of information, and some of that suddenly connects to form a picture. I usually paint these pictures straight on to the canvas without much drafting.”
“I now think I’d be happy if the works I’ve made with the intention of depicting light have even the tiniest glimmer.” *1

In this way, Kudo perceives everyday scenery and objects that are often overlooked with her unique sensibility, constructing images through her own emotions and memories. She then depicts the grand narratives that seem to radiate from everyday life on her canvas, using an expressive idiom replete with vibrant color that is dynamic yet delicate.

Kudo’s worldview, which defies categorization and brims with originality, has won critical acclaim both in Japan and abroad. Some of her notable solo exhibitions have been “Like When We See a Flower Bloom and Realize It Was There All Along” (Hiratsuka City Museum of Art, 2022), Wilkinson Gallery (London, 2015, 2012), Marc Foxx Gallery (Los Angeles, 2011), while group exhibitions include “Unnatural Nature: Post-Pop Landscapes” (Acquavella Gallery, New York, 2022) and Saatchi Gallery (London, 2017, 2013). She is currently showing her work at the “Plastic Utopia: Our New Ecosystem” exhibition at the Hirosaki Museum of Contemporary Art. Kudo’s works are in the collections of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.

For more details on Kudo:
https://tomiokoyamagallery.com/en/artists/makiko-kudo/

【About this exhibition and her new works: “Seeing With Myself” and landscapes that one looks at with a past self 】

Regarding the title of this exhibition, “Seeing With Myself,” as well as her new works, Kudo says: “I still feel as if my past self, who has been to many places, is still faintly there, so I created these works in the hope that viewers would be able to look at this scenery as if they were doing so with their past selves.”

While Kudo herself describes her works as “depictions of what I see,” they are greatly influenced by the places and times she has experienced. “Reconstructions of mental landscapes” in which scenes from the rural areas where she spent her childhood overlap with the landscapes of the area where she currently lives, as well as the intertwining of these times, manifest themselves in these works in a manner that is entirely unique to Kudo.

Kudo says that her favorite places are “where people and nature mix and nature is holding its own, and places by water”*1 Her works often depict people and nature, with humans existing within that nature or as a part of it, where all elements coexist alongside each other in an equal relationship.

The work Seeing With Myself, whose title is the same as the name of this exhibition, conveys the power and intensity of the gaze of someone staring intently at their own face reflected on a water surface. At the same time, it also seems to depict two beings that are both themselves and not themselves — such as the present and the past — facing each other.
“I have a habit of looking into water wherever I find it. Even when water is clean and clear, I often find I can only see the surface, which can start to look like jagged lines, kind of strange…the feeling that it has mass and you could go inside is important I guess” *1

Day into Night, Night into Day was painted after Kudo visited the Machida Dahlia Gardens a few years ago, where the flowers were so intensely beautiful and full of life that she was overwhelmed by their vitality. While she found them difficult to paint at the time, she now feels that she can.
The striking title, with the “day” scene at the top and the “night” scene at the bottom, evokes images like “thinking of night during the day,” “living life without making a distinction between day and night,” or “leaning towards night,” conjuring up various literal meanings and a kind of poetic atmosphere.
The human figure in this painting sits cross-legged, silently reading a book amidst the vibrant flowers in a way that seems to express the desultory emotions particular to adolescence — sad yet joyful, bright but not really so.

Even the same person in the same place can appear dramatically illuminated or clearly defined depending on the passage of time and the angle of the light. The interplay of landscapes and emotions, visible and invisible elements, and opposing entities brings one’s existence into sharp focus. Kudo’s works convey how such a profound dialogue with daily life can transform the world and bring its radiant energy to the surface. We hope you will take the opportunity to visit this exhibition.

*1 “Dialogue between Hans Ulrich Obrist and Makiko Kudo,” Makiko Kudo: Reborn as Air, Bijutsu Shuppansha, 2022
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For press inquiries, please contact: press@tomiokoyamagallery.com (Makiko Okado)
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Makiko Kudo, Day into Night, Night into Day, 2025, Oil on canvas, 227.3 x 181.9 cm. Courtesy of the Artist and Tomio Koyama Gallery.

 

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