Tomio Koyama Gallery Roppongi is pleased to present an exhibition of paintings and drawings by Hiro Kunikawa.
About Hiro Kunikawa: The Passing of a Refined and Rich Talent
Born in Saitama in 1992, Kunikawa graduated from the oil painting department at Musashino Art University in 2015. He completed the university’s graduate program in oil painting in 2017 and received the Tomio Koyama Award at the Art Award Tokyo Marunouchi 2017 that same year. The following year, in 2018, Kunikawa held his first solo exhibition, “Reports on the Undefined,” at 8/ ART GALLERY/ Tomio Koyama Gallery. Sadly, he passed away in 2021, leaving many to mourn his refined and rich talent.
In April 2025, a solo exhibition by Kunikawa titled “Portraits of People in the Distance” was held in General Exhibition Room 1 at the Museum of Modern Art, Saitama, featuring approximately 340 paintings and drawings, including previously unexhibited works. His first monograph of the same title was also published, winning him significant acclaim.
Regarding this exhibition and the works: the vague sense of “auratic presence and atmosphere” expressed through nude figures, shifts in distance, unconscious sensations, and enigmatic time
This exhibition will showcase approximately 90 paintings and drawings.
Many of the works Kunikawa left behind during his lifetime are drawings. In addition, both his drawings and paintings depict nude figures. These figures can be described as abstracted, mysterious entities, of unidentifiable gender or nationality, embodying a vague sense of “auratic presence and atmosphere.”
This nude motif stems from Kunikawa’s interest in “the fear and mystery of people,” and his desire to depict “that which lies between what is clear and distinct — that which transcends how words, genres, and other cultural accoutrements emerge once you put on clothes, and which is not beholden to such a situation.” In his own words:
“When I paint, it seems to me that I am trying to capture a certain kind of auratic presence. In order to do so, I borrow the forms of people or landscapes, or images I once imagined in my mind, using them as hints that would allow me to capture that aura.”*1
Kunikawa begins by drawing the human figure. Once this human form takes shape, a vaguely defined space emerges. He then makes a loose sketch with lines for the background, thereby allowing various forms to develop. Kunikawa does not start with a preconceived image in mind: he works with that which emerges intuitively. He also emphasizes the importance of the distance between himself, his subject, and reality, seeking out that distance — how far it is, the pleasing manner in which that distance shifts and modulates — that distant image where traces of another time or someone else seem to blend into the present moment. According to Kunikawa, he was searching for this sensory “nameless state” that one experiences in a daze.
Artist and art critic Takuma Ishikawa had the following comments.
“Kunikawa depicts people who are neither undressed nor undressing, but are going about their lives without clothes on. ,,,, They certainly seem quite animalistic. These are hybrid figures that are both human and animal, and neither. These are not mythical characters that combine the mutual abilities of humans and animals, however, but rather hybrids of mutual weakness and inability. ”
Artist Satoru Kurata, who was one year ahead of Kunikawa at Musashino Art University, also recorded his feelings upon first seeing Kunikawa’s work in his own text as follows.
“It was a painting the likes of which I had never seen before. The colors, the sensibilities behind its forms, the peculiar sense of the trace of a person that was both absent and present, the gap between the material and the image, and its mysterious persuasiveness — all of these things told me that this painting was something special, like some kind of miracle that most people had still not noticed. It even seemed as though a new form of expression was being born before my eyes, and I was able to witness it.”
Throughout his brief yet profound life, Kunikawa consistently pursued and expressed his vision through his body of work. We hope you will take this opportunity to experience how viewers will perceive and interpret this worldview.
*1 Hiro Kunikawa Exhibition, “Reports on the Undefined,” Press Release, 8/ ART GALLERY/ Tomio Koyama Gallery, 2018
*2 Takuma Ishikawa, “Naked Painting (Painting in the Nude),” Collection of Works by Hiro Kunikawa “Portraits of People in the Distance,” Tomio Koyama Gallery, 2025
*3 Satoru Kurata text, Collection of Works by Hiro Kunikawa “Portraits of People in the Distance,” Tomio Koyama Gallery, 2025
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For press inquiries, please contact: press@www.tomiokoyamagallery.com (Makiko Okado)
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