Drifting Off in a Bathtub, Waking Up in a Water Tank

Three Japanese artists, Azuki Furuya, Io Okazaki and Maiko Kikuchi met in NYC and they found some interesting similarities in each other’s works. New York City is a place that consists of many people of different cultures. It’s quite the opposite in Japan where the demographic is almost entirely Japanese and the culture is incredibly old and engrained.

Each of these three artists gradually came to realize that creating art in NYC makes them more sensitive and conscious about their identities. Coincidentally, they started to extract their identities from some kind of “Layers” in each of their own art works.

Furuya layers her family photos and makes relief style painting by sanding down a pile of her personal history, so to speak.

Okazaki express his own story and myth in his painting by layering images of “cast of skin”, a metaphor of contemporary consumer society in which he lives.

Kikuchi picks up materials and images that consists of her ordinary life, layers them in collage fashion and finds the moment they turn into “Daydreams”.

In this exhibition, Kikuchi curates and presents these artists’ significant and unique works that they have created while in NYC.