Tomio Koyama Gallery Maebashi is pleased to present “Stroking the Sway”, a solo exhibition by Midori Sato.
On the occasion of her first exhibition in Maebashi, a selection of works from 2021 to 2025 has been selected, focusing on Sato’s representative motifs, including flowers, interiors, closets, shoes, and dresses.
【About Midori Sato’s Works –
Bold brushstrokes, combination of colors, and fundamental motifs rendered with delicate contemporaneity】
Sato’s works are characterized by emotional and bold brushstrokes, and the combination of lines and surfaces in vivid colors such as purple, yellow, pink, orange, and blue. Painting directly onto the canvas without preliminary sketches, she deliberately leaves traces of accidental paint bleeding and areas of blank space, thereby evoking a sense of vast and distant spatial expansion. Her works are filled with the multilayered and free-spirited appeal unique to painting, and deeply stimulate our sensibilities.
Closets are among her signature motifs, while she also engages with simple and fundamental subjects that have long fascinated many people, such as dresses, shoes, carpets, flowers, and fruit. Guided by her admiration for these motifs and her own sensibilities, Sato moves between reality and imagination, sublimating them into a unique, delicate, and contemporary pictorial world.
Another characteristic of her work is that, while repeatedly depicting the same motifs, her manner of expression shifts in response to her experiences and the emotions she feels at any given time. Flowers entwine with closets and dresses, scenes appear to drift through the sky, lines become more abstract, while at other times concrete motifs emerge. This fresh and evolving world invites anticipation as to how it may transform next, and has received high acclaim across a wide range of fields, including collectors, art professionals, corporations, and creators.
In 2013, she received the Ohara Museum of Art Prize at VOCA, and in 2016 she participated in the Aichi Triennale. In 2023, she exhibited with her partner Yuichiro Moriyama in “From Bonnard to Tillmans and Contemporary Artists: Interior Visions” (Pola Museum of Art, Hakone, Kanagawa), where they filled an entire room with a remarkable world of expression. Her recent major solo exhibitions include “Diaphanous petals” (Pola Museum of Art, Atrium Gallery, 2019) and “FLOW” (Gana Art Bogwang, Seoul, Korea, 2023). This marks her seventh solo exhibition with Tomio Koyama Gallery since 2012. Her activities also extend across various fields, including providing cover artwork for Fuminori Nakamura’s novel “Last Winter, We Parted ”(Gentosha), as well as collaborations with RMK.
【About the New Works】
The following text is provided by the artist on the occasion of this exhibition.
Stroking the Sway
In June, in the Cotswolds in England, I found a corner of a garden where countless marguerites were in bloom. In front of them, there was a place where one could enjoy warm tea and sweets, so I decided to spend a quiet afternoon there.
In the refreshing, dry air, the white petals of innumerable marguerites swayed gently in the wind across a green field. After finishing tea, I walked among them, and felt the wind softly brushing against my skin as it passed through the flowers. It was a comforting sensation, as if I were being enveloped by that place.
From this sensation, an image suddenly came to me—a closet lined with soft, translucent white dresses. Bathed in light, the dresses shift in color moment by moment, surrounding me. The drapes, swaying in the wind, brush against my skin, filling me just like that marguerite field. I reach out my hand and slowly stroke them sideways, as if to once again feel that wind.
—Midori Sato
This text reflects Sato’s fundamental approach of working with motifs she deeply loves, while also revealing a harmony between her daily life and the rhythms of nature.
In the new work Margaret Field, marguerite flowers are scattered throughout the closet, resulting in a soft and gentle atmosphere.
We warmly invite you to experience Midori Sato’s first exhibition in Maebashi, presented amid the fresh greenery of the season.
—————————————————————————————–
For press inquiries, please contact: press@tomiokoyamagallery.com
—————————————————————————————–
