Gallery Emptiness is happy to announce artist Yuichi Yokoyama’s first solo exhibition in Shanghai, Yuichi Yokoyama 1994–2024, on view by way of August 24, 2024. As an artist, Yokoyama intentionally separates his manga from his work, however the distinctive connections between the 2 are what make his works attention-grabbing. In response to the artist, he selected manga over portray as his technique of creative expression as a result of manga is extra necessary to him. Nevertheless, lately, Yokoyama’s worldwide exhibitions not solely included work within the conventional sense, but in addition confirmed a considerable amount of manga-related works in addition to “Title,” manga sketches which are thought of least necessary and displayable in Japanese manga custom. To at the present time, Yokoyama’s manga follow has re-entered the scope of latest artwork establishments, thought of as a selected portray style originated in East Asian tradition; therefore, Yokoyama’s follow circulates past the type of manga tankobon, crossing over the fields of manga and portray.
What distinguishes Yokoyama’s manga from his work maybe lies in legibility: the previous might be learn and interpreted with pleasure, whereas the latter are unbiased and full entities composed of strains, colour fields, supplies, and texture. Observing the rhythm and groove contained in work as listening to music, evokes a unique type of pleasure. When you take out a body or a web page from Yokoyama’s manga, can it’s thought of a portray? Does Yokoyama’s portray present the identical room for interpretation because the manga?
Over the course of portray, painters at all times search to include viewers in a single pictorial body, offering adequate visible affect to persuade viewers of the rationality in illustration. As a substitute of showing a single perspective, time and area work together fluidly in Yokoyama’s works, knowledgeable by manga studying. Yokoyama’s manga stands out with its distinctive painterly high quality. Nonetheless, if a single panel is extracted, it hardly resembles a portray. For his manga at all times implies a continuity between panels, even when the facilitating visible break is eliminated; the interconnectivity continuously exists in formal and content material coordination. Work, beneath Yokoyama’s intervention, seem like advanced, regardless that the compositions could possibly be easy, every altering bit comprising wealthy particulars and data.
For this reason Yokoyama’s work are unlikely to be included right into a manga as one panel; regardless of sharing the identical visible language: dashing strains, exploding bubbles, and screentone, the strategy is totally different. Nonetheless, Yokoyama’s originality manifests, which differentiates his works from that of Roy Lichtenstein: Yokoyama doesn’t reproduce and enlarge manga panels to copy the viewing expertise of billboard or film display; quite the opposite, he employs the image, method, and logics in manga to experiment with making use of manga studying to formal development in geometric shapes.
When viewers have a look at Yokoyama’s depictions of the solar, the rain, the snow, and the intricate, actual but alienated scenes, they notice that the abstraction shouldn’t be the attribute of latest artwork, moderately from the extra acquainted and relatable manga. The creative expression is beautiful because the symbolic language of manga is launched into portray, serving as a degree of entry to interpret the work. The expertise of studying manga helps ease the sensation of loss when confronted with work.
Intriguingly, Yokoyama’s portray employs a manga considering course of, which expands the chance to interpret his works: the ambivalent visible parts might stem from each the artist’s remark and extraction from the on a regular basis expertise and his remaking of actuality, like an otherworldly creator.
Within the Untitled (2000) sequence, the artist depicts sunny paddy subject after the rain, with the solar shining in exaggerated geometric shapes in all instructions alongside the sharp strains, the black dots within the washed palette making a steamy impact, and superb strains forming thick cumulus clouds above the horizon, which provides out a clue {that a} rain has simply left. In one other work, the sky darkens whereas rain drops hitting leaves to kind a curtain of water. The third piece portrays amber-like geometric objects coated by snow which floats in a turbulent stream, a surreal scene to viewers. Equally, the final work captures snowmelt: the tree trunk is heat and toasty beneath the solar, snow resembling big rice grains turning into enormous droplets, reflecting totally different shades of colour. By means of Yokoyama’s work, our senses develop into extra receptive to the brand new views and angles on this newly created world, ready to maneuver past the present world.
If Yokoyama’s manga creates an open and all-encompassing world for viewers, his work function a key to get into this world. Viewers can at all times use one kind to higher perceive one other in Yokoyama’s follow, both by way of the event of exhibitions or the interior stimulation from manga studying, relying on which subject viewers worth and situate.
In manga studying, viewers normally determine with characters to expertise the fictional world; the characters Yokoyama created, nonetheless, undertake unconventional bodily varieties in several geometric shapes with barely recognizable facial options. This intervention suggests a detour from on a regular basis life, and thru the curious lens of a bunch of outsiders, viewers get to relentlessly deconstruct and fictionalize the which means of the acquainted objects and scenes. To totally embrace the angle of the characters means viewers can break away from the limitation and prejudice within the present world, following freely the lead of the artist.
Yokoyama first abstracts the fact of the figurative world into manga, after which treats this summary world as the brand new actuality; by way of his interpretation and transformation, the artist accomplishes a sequence of inconceivable feats of creation. For viewers who comply with his narratives, they’ll’t assist however apply the brand new order to the conceived outdated world, making an attempt to subvert the prevailing construction. Such is a recreation that Yokoyama enjoys enjoying all through virtually all of his works.
As an example, in Shade Engineering (2004) sequence: Shade Engineering episode 3 reveals the constructing means of various kinds of human dwelling area. The form and construction, although seem like acquainted homes, don’t really carry out the operate of housing; collectively, they kind a quasi-residential space, whereas they develop into a totally overseas panorama to viewers. In Shade Engineering episode 5, Yokoyama constructs an set up using an alternate logic to the human world; the mountains kind a circle, related by triangle glass partitions. The mountain tops are rigorously trimmed to unify with the glass top; these completely fitted elements are held collectively to develop into a reservoir, ready for the rain. Identical to the characters in Shade Engineering episode 15, viewers are additionally clueless about what the three footage are and should be prone to any fantastical explanations supplied by the artist, relinquishing management and liberating from the outdated order, and thus creating extra room to grasp portray.
Subsequently, exhibitions corresponding to Yuichi Yokoyama 1994–2024 are essential in introducing viewers who’re open to the type of manga into the world view created by Yokoyama. On this case, exhibitions don’t essentially convey forth probably the most inspiration for manga followers, however for many who don’t have a fixated understanding of area and geometric varieties. The exhibition is an invite for the adventurous who’re keen to comply with the works of Yokoyama to discover a brand new, imaginary realm. —Hu Xiaojiang