SHUKADO CONTEMPORARY

Last year, the painting of yurei (ghost painting) titled "Darkness" by Toko Okamoto had a powerful spotlight in the "Exhibition of Memento Mori" from the collection of novelist,Ichi Orihara held by Vanilla Gallery in Ginza.

Mr. Orihara kindly contributed an essay titled "Smile of Death-wonders on one painting" to the column of two pages spread on the January issue 2019 of ART Collectors'.

Toko Okamoto has been an escort runner of Yasunari Ikenagawho has led a trend of “beauty painting”. The females she depicts are swaying between hope and despair and her painting figuresas painted by a female artist acquired the sympathy of many people. However, I cannot say yes or no whether the females depicted by her deserve beauty painting or not.

Mr. Hara seems very dandy in my impression, riding over a motorcycle with black leather jacket waving black hair. Yet, what I like most of him, his single minded chivalrous spirit. He is afar from artistic affectation, pride, or narcissism.

The relationship has begun since I just happened to buy his work, “still-life”. To put on his work on our catalog we have contacted him.

A heteromorphic younger beckons from the monochrome screen. "Come here, it's fun," he said. In that jungle, animals, humans and humanoids are living together. A quiet and different world that somehow seems to be nostalgic.

Before becoming a artist, she was a model of several painters, and was also a collector. Although she got employment with suppressing the desire to draw a picture, she could not stop drawing.

As if the genre "cat" was established in the world of painting, pictures of cats are produced one after another in the world. There are plenty of cute pictures of cats. Among them, a Taiwanese painter, Chen Pei Yi's cats are really alive.

Nakahara Arisa has a magical power. That's the power to see. It is said that Medusa will change the gazer into a stone. She is the reverse. When she see something, she turns into a stone. She sees too much. So it is scary for her to even see eggplants.

Cuteness with Hiroo Suzuki's work are even overload.
Suzuki studied "restoration of art works" at the master course of the Tokyo University of the arts. While dealing with old works, he found out his own view of painting: 'the essence of Japanese art is "humor."'

For us, Okamoto Toko is an artist Ikenaga Yasunari found. Ikenaga was looking for a "fellow" of a painter who painted a so-called beautiful women painting, like him.

Ikenaga is the contemporary painter we have first worked with.
When I met for the first time, he drawed only women with almost self-taught.

Born in 1984, Nakahara Arisa is a young Japanese-style painter who has gained high recognition with her colorful, passionate and dignified woman portraits.