From 22 March to 3 May 2025, WKM Gallery is delighted to present Embodied Perspectives, a group exhibition featuring six contemporary Japanese painters: Soh Souen, Iori Nagashima, Koji Yamaguchi, Jun Tsunoda, Kohei Yamada, and Momo Yoshino. Though diverse in context and style, ranging from minimal abstraction to detailed figuration, each of these artists share a similar goal: the desire to connect with the physical world around them through the act of painting.

Embodied Perspectives showcases paintings that highlight the body’s visceral experience of the world; both the artist’s, as well as the viewer’s. Iori Nagashima and Soh Souen’s intimate depictions of the human body offer perhaps the most direct interpretation of this idea. Nagashima’s smartphone snapshot-like paintings of casual moments, depicted in muted colours, convey the warm, dull happiness of relationships that carry us through the mundane, while Souen’s feathery pointillist close-ups of lips, ears, and various body parts emit an almost dream-like quality, like fragmented renders of vivid, private memories.

Koji Yamaguchi shares the figurative approach of Nagashima and Souen, but he does not depict other people; rather, he depicts the nature around him, particularly in Kawasaki and Tokyo, from his viewpoint as a skateboarder. The blurred landscapes, as seen from Yamaguchi’s viewpoint as he skates by, may lack people, but we can still feel their presence (abandoned blue construction tarps, flattened shrubbery) and absence (neglected and overgrown weeds, layers of dust and dirt collecting on the untouched tarps). The viewer is also made to feel a sense of movement and speed in their own body, as the painting allows them to vicariously see through Yamaguchi’s eyes.

Jun Tsunoda shares Yamaguchi’s interest in nature, and Nagashima and Souen’s desire for connection to the world. The combination of these two things can describe the motivation for his “Black Plants” series, which are on display in this exhibition. Tsunoda, however, takes a very different visual approach from the others, utilising elements of abstraction to explore his somewhat spiritual relation to nature. Inspired by his move to the countryside of Yamanashi in the late 1980s, Tsunoda employs traditional Japanese lacquer and shikkui (lime plaster) to create “primitive” and graphical depictions of plant life, representing his curiosity in the unique life forces of each plant.

Momo Yoshino and Kohei Yamada take the elements of abstraction in Tsunoda’s works and push them to the next level, almost departing from figuration - but not completely. Yoshino pares down colour and shape to create simple but clever optical illusions, which deceptively appear as three-dimensional reliefs reminiscent of origami, the Japanese art of paper-folding. Yoshino's works heighten the viewer's awareness of their own body and its position in relation to the artwork, creating a dynamic interplay between perception and physicality. Yamada's abstract colour fields evoke a similar effect. The meticulously layered colours, which Yamada describes as a process of "hiding backgrounds," create a sense of depth that draws the viewer in. The result is a spatial experience that brings the viewer back into awareness of their own body - thus bringing the exhibition back full circle.

The distinct styles of each artist, when put together, spotlight the uniqueness of their approaches even as they share similar aims. These six artists not only showcase the rich diversity of contemporary Japanese painting, but also illuminate its promising future.

^ WKM Gallery will have special opening hours during Art Basel Week in Hong Kong, opening daily from 22, 24 - 29 March 2025, 11 am - 8 pm, 23 March 2025, Sunday, 11 am - 7 pm and 30 March 2025, Sunday, 12 – 5 pm.