Michio FUKUOKA Solo Exhibition

Gallery Yamaki Fine Art is pleased to hold a solo show “Michio FUKUOKA: Let’s Smile” from Sat, September 17, 2022 to Fri, October 21, 2022, as the second exhibition of the artist at our gallery after four years. This exhibition will feature the work 《Isn’t That about Enough? Let’s Smile》, combined with drawings never open to public from the 1960s and landscape sculptures made of FRP (Fiber Reinforced Plastic), a signature material of Fukuoka’s work, from a new perspective of the present.

Fukuoka started the drawings which consist of repeated short words like an utter of his inner feeling from as early as the late 1960. From the late 90s, Fukuoka worked on a series of second-dimensional sculptures whose surfaces of FRP are covered with cynical words such as “I have nothing to do.” Through the contrast between the repetition of the hard but seemingly simple handwork of carving FRP and the substantivity of the material like a large stone monument, the artist presents his own sense of humor full of self-criticism to his own daily life and of art creation itself. Continuing to carve the same words of murmuring every time, swaying between a sense of anticipation and disappointment to himself or something else, he expresses unbounded brightness and bottomless futility at the same time.

Reflecting on this new post-COVID life, we might have become more sensitive than before to the meaning or power in the words which oneself and others say. Fukuoka’s works with the motif of “words” stay close to our situation. When we look at Fukuoka’s work through the eyes of our ever-changing senses and values in this moving society, what kind of inner reaction will be evoked? We hope you will enjoy exploring Fukuoka’s unique trajectory with a keen sense of change in the society.