YASSUSHI IKEJIRI (b. 1971 in Hokkaido, Japan) is a contemporary expressionist influenced by a wide range of landscape painters, from Ivan Shishkin to Edward Hopper. Ikejiri chooses mundane scenes from everyday life in Tokyo and depicts them with astonishing detail and saturated color. His painstaking style and modest subject matter reminds us of the pure, celebratory joy found in landscape painting. Ikejiri’s works were first shown in the US at the 2019 Seattle Art Fair followed by a successful solo exhibition HERE, THERE in 2021 at SEIZAN Gallery New York.

KENTA TAKAHASHI (b. 1996 in Aichi, Japan) is trained in traditional Japanese style painting called “Nihonga.” For his US debut, the artist completed five new paintings including a large scale “byobu” screen. The paintings feature images of diamond steel plate, patinated and covered with random graffiti. Takahashi recreates these ubiquitous urban scenes with washi paper, mineral pigments, and shell powder covered with silver leaves. Takahashi’s paintings defy expectations and present new approaches to the concepts of high and low, East and West, ubiquitous and specific, craftsmanship and industrialism.