Dates: Sat., January 28, 2023 – Sun., July 2, 2023

Venue: Pola Museum of Art, Atrium Gallery

The HIRAKU Project is a series of exhibitions introducing contemporary artworks by recipients of the Pola Art Foundation Grant for Emerging Artists. As the 14th exhibition in the series, we are pleased to present works by Naofumi Maruyama.

Since his debut as an artist in the 1990s, Naofumi Maruyama has consistently devoted himself to painting. One of Japan’s preeminent artists, Maruyama has held numerous exhibitions at home and abroad, and his work has been acquired by many of Japan’s major museums. Unlike the traditional method of painting in which the artist applies paint to a standing canvas, Maruyama makes his works by placing a water-soaked cotton cloth on the floor and approaching them horizontally. The boundaries between the shapes blend together in the pictures, which intentionally incorporate bleeding and blurring, and together with the brilliant coloring of the acrylic paint create an indistinct, dream-like realm.

The title of this exhibition is Kicking the Water: Sengokuhara. Just as the tranquil scenes reflected in the water’s surface are destroyed when we kick a puddle, our footing can sometimes be so unstable that the world we know has the potential to be turned upside down. We are once again reminded of this fact by our experiences with earthquakes, climate change, and the pandemic. The exhibition title conveys Maruyama’s awareness of the uncertainty
of the world and our own existence.

Similarly, the exhibition venue is enveloped in a thin luminous veil. Inspired by Maruyama’s paintings, the architect Jun Aoki, a close friend of the artist’s, devised an exhibition structure made of layered moire fabric that resembles the water’s surface. The Sengokuhara area lay at the bottom of a lake in ancient times. As we experience this space created by Moriyama and Aoki, we feel a slight anxiety as if we are walking on water and being enticed into an unknown world.

Naofumi Maruyama（left）

1964 Born in Niigata, Japan. Lives and works in Tokyo.
Professor in the Painting Department at the Musashino Art University

Selected Solo Exhibitions

2022 Kicking the Water, ShugoArts (Tokyo)

2017 FLOWING, Wooson Gallery (Daegu, South Korea)

2008 the front in the back, Meguro Museum of Art (Tokyo)

Selected Group Exhibitions

2016 GROUND2: Talking About Paintings, Talking About Seeing, Musashino Art University

Museum& Library (Tokyo)

2014 Niigata Creations ‒ Museum in Motion, Niigata City Art Museum (Niigata)

2011 Floating Boat, Toyota Municipal Museum of Art (Aichi)

Award

2008 Art Encouragement Prize for New Artists (fine art), 59th Award of Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology

Jun Aoki（right）

Architect. 1956 Born in Yokohama, Japan.

Completed the University of Tokyo Master’s Degree Program in Department of Architecture, Graduate School of Engineering, he established his own practice, Jun Aoki & Associates, in 1991.

(Reorganized as AS in 2020)

Professor in the Architecture Department at the Tokyo University of the Arts since 2019

Director of Kyoto City Museum of Art (the Kyoto City KYOCERA Museum of Art) since 2021

Award

1999 AIJ Prize for Architectural Design Division, Fukushimagata Lagoon Museum

2005 Art Encouragement Prize, 55th Award of Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology

2021 AIJ Prize for Architectural Design Division, Kyoto City KYOCERA Museum of Art