Time & Style Midtown is pleased to welcome Mami Kosemura for the exhibition “Painting and Life.”

Although Kosemura’s works express “installation,” “video,” and “photography,” all of them are connected to “painting.”

This is a moving image work in which the artist’s hand has been added very naturally and very skillfully to the pattern of exemplary painting. They leave an imprint on the viewer, just as Western classical portraits of figures and still life cut out in frames and Japanese paintings that their settings have expressed. A beautiful photographic still life work, carefully photographed by hand with a steady focus on the motif, reminiscent of certain classical paintings. It’s like a page out of a museum illustrated book, a work of video and photography that makes you doubt your eyes in the world of beautiful images and drawings. Each expression is delicate, and the process of creation seems more picturesque, with the background scenery and playfulness of the artist behind each move.

The exhibition was postponed last summer, then again last winter, and now is being held this summer at the end of the rainy season. During the two postponements, the season of the exhibition and the season of the works to be exhibited became the same season, and the exhibition was organized flexibly, prioritizing that there would be no contradiction for the viewers. Time & Style, the interior store where this exhibition will be held, is a space reminiscent of a living area with furniture, accessories, and bonsai trees arranged according to the seasons. Kosemura’s adaptable creation of the venue and her interaction with people and stores with signs of everyday life are also highlights of this show named “Pictures and Life.” We hope you will come and enjoy the exhibition. (Planning: Banana Art)

“I create photographic and video works that can be described as camera-based reproductions of paintings, drawing on existing staging methods and structures. All of the works on display look like paintings, but they were all created while photographing actual objects. The theme of this exhibition is ‘Pictures and Life.’ “

“Taking advantage of the interior of Time & Style, the exhibition venue, I will exhibit works based on various forms of pictures we happen to see in our daily lives, rather than pictures created in one piece, such as framed oil paintings.”

“For example, botanical paintings and illustrated books drawn for research purposes, sketches that serve as notes, still life paintings of tableware around us used for studies and traditional Japanese barrier paintings and hanging scrolls that were painted as part of interior spaces. This section is based on pictures that were part of daily life. It can be said that these pictures serve as a mirror reflecting the way of life and people’s way of looking at things in the past. Such is the role of a camera in recording, an observer’s view of nature, or a painter’s gaze on daily necessities. The way they are depicted and the way motifs are used are interesting to us today and strange and questionable. The gaps and inconsistencies between our perspectives and those of the forgotten old paintings become more visible and apparent when we try to recreate what is depicted in the paintings in the real space. I hope that through the slight hesitation and sense of discomfort that arises when facing a piece that has been transformed from a picture into reality and then recreated again in the form of a picture, each viewer will be able to see things with a little more sensitivity than usual. Also, this time, I hope you will enjoy the harmony of my works with your unique living space as a display.”(Mami Kosemura)

Mami Kosemura

Postdoctoral Course (Oil Painting), Graduate School of Fine Arts, Tokyo University of the Arts She has created video installations and photographic works that skillfully utilize photographic processing and painting composition and present them at art exhibitions and film festivals in Japan and abroad. 2016 – 2017 Study abroad in New York. Solo exhibition at Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Shinagawa, Japan, in 2018.

Time & Style Midtown

Tokyo Midtown Galleria 3F, 9-7-4 Akasaka, Minato-ku, Tokyo
Tel: 03-5413-3501
Open: 11am – 8pm