YASUKO HASUMURA (b.1958, Hokkaido, Japan) manipulates Japanese washi paper and sumi ink into a unique abstract expression, capturing air, light or a fleeting instant onto canvas. Hasumura studied oil painting at Tama Art University and contemporary art theory under Lee Ufan. Greatly influenced by her encounter with Noh theatre, which she describes as a “soul-trembling experience,” Hasumura recreates this experience onto canvas

ERI IWASAKI (b. 1968 in Hyogo, Japan) brings new portraits to the fair. Pitch dark backgrounds painted in ground minerals, feature ethereal characters and swirling clouds rendered in platinum paint. The serene faces with steady gaze and straight postures are reminiscent of Buddhist statues in Kyoto, where the artist lives and works.

HARUOMI IZUMI (b. 1979, Chiba, Japan) is a successor of “Nihonga,” the Japanese-style painting which has been practiced over centuries. The word Nihonga was developed as the opposite or counter word, to the word Yo-ga, or Western painting, and is often characterized by the use of traditional materials such as mineral pigments, a binder made of animal glue, washi paper, as well as the choice of subject matter such as nature and animals. Izumi studied Nihonga at Tokyo University of the Arts. Izumi’s signature works, including Yukoku (The Scarlet Hour) and Sokoku (The Blue Hour), depart from traditional Nihonga and combine surreal color with obsessively repetitive patterns of trees. In this way, Izumi creates deeply textured scenes that encompass their surroundings and engulf the viewer with their rich aura.

TOSHIYUKI KAJIOKA (b. 1978 in Tokyo, Japan) has stoically painted the same subject for twenty years: the surface of a flowing river. Working in sumi ink and graphite pencil, he explores the transcendental wildness and tranquility of watery depths.

Hasui Kawase

After two years at the School of Fine Arts in Lausanne, ÉTIENNE KRÄHENBÜHL (b. 1953, Vevey, Switzerland) moved to Barcelona and then Paris. Returning to Switzerland, he first went to Agiez and then set up a workshop in Romainmôtier, where he devoted his time to sculpture, taking particular interest in the marks left by time on various materials. As the art consultant Joan-Francesc Ainaud writes, “The idea of time is always present in Krähenbühl’s work: time as the artist’s witness or his expression, the materialization of his memory. […] Rust and wear are both the materialization and the metaphor for time. Time as memory of a past, recollection, witness or footstep, in constant transformation.”