MAHO KUBOTA GALLERY is pleased to present the first major solo show by Kyoto-based artist Yui Samejima, opening on May 15.
The exhibition will feature fourteen newly created paintings of varying dimensions.

Samejima’s paintings are often created using shaped canvases—supports that deviate from the conventional rectangular format. In her work, there appears to be a deliberate refusal to allow the viewer to identify individual motifs as discrete elements. What emerges on the surface are objects that resemble ritual implements or symbolic artifacts, as well as traces suggesting past human engagement with them. Yet, these images do not function as “subjects” in the traditional sense of representational painting. Rather, they seem to form a loosely connected visual language that links the works together in a more abstract way. Samejima’s use of color also adheres to a distinctive logic. While black forms the foundation of her palette, she skillfully navigates the realm of in-between hues—those that oscillate between harmony and discord. This chromatic sensibility seems to follow the internal rules of a solemn and tranquil kingdom that she herself has constructed.

Samejima reflects on her practice in the following words: “Human beings are unable to see the entirety of the world directly. Instead, we each construct a subjective version of reality based on fragmented information received through the five senses. Just as the Cubists once deconstructed their subjects and reassembled them on canvas to propose a new perspective, I am interested in how painting—as a visual art form—can gesture toward what lies beyond those fragments, toward what remains unseen, especially in our current era, when the very modes of perception and sensory frameworks are in flux.”

In fact, when facing her paintings, it is clear that each work does not stand alone, but rather, together they form a single vast kingdom or a grand narrative. This evokes the sense of a hidden structure and energy that extends far beyond the visible, much like the view of the landscape from an airplane or the archipelago scattered across the sea.

Samejima’s paintings may begin with a quiet renunciation of knowing. Even if we attempt to piece together fragments and make partial sense of them, it is fundamentally impossible to grasp the entirety of the world that lies beyond. Her work suggests that by accepting this impossibility, we may begin to perceive a landscape that emerges beyond the bounds of understanding. In a world where once-cherished ideals have crumbled and conflicts erupt across the globe, Samejima’s paintings awaken within us the power to imagine what cannot be seen. Yet, what she seeks to depict is not a perfect or complete world. Rather, it may be the countless, answerless threads of reality—each one surfacing uniquely within the perception of the individual viewer.

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Repetition and Transformation : The Sum

[ Exhibition Statement ]

We are unable to grasp the entirety of the world directly. Instead, we each construct a subjective reality based on fragmented information received through our five senses. Perception, therefore, is not a mere collection of visible elements; rather, it is the very act through which phenomena are continuously generated by linking fragments together.

This exhibition focuses on “repetition” and on the “transformation” that takes place within the fixed framework of time and space that defines painting. Repetition is a sustained process of observing a subject, through which subtle changes give rise to new perspectives —not simply reproducing identical forms, but allowing new perspectives to arise through subtle shifts and variations. A reconfiguration takes place through the slow build-up of subtle differences.

The exhibited works draw on the methodology of Cubism, which deconstructs and reconstructs perception, and the Surrealist approach that captures transcendent moments through chance. Grounded in a phenomenological mode of observation, they pose questions to the “invisible presence.” What is depicted becomes a site where immediate forms perceived through the body intersect with entities that, though belonging to the past, remain in the present as fragments. Through the viewer’s interpretation, these elements are complemented and brought together into a unified whole.

This dynamic is deeply embedded in the formation of the works themselves. Beginning with bodily observation unmediated by language, the process involves faithfully translating a language emitted by the body that transcends conscious thought. In doing so, it opens toward the unknown—something that cannot be fully contained within the framework of words. Through this process, the work transcends being a merely visual object, becoming a site that can expand temporally and spatially, and one that continuously transforms through its relationship with the viewer.

Perception is inherently incomplete; we build our understanding of the world through hypotheses, constantly revising them. Yet it is precisely this incompleteness that sparks new imagination and gestures toward the “invisible presence.” In an age where modes of perception and the very frameworks of sensation are in flux, I hope that this exhibition will open up new perspectives on the act of seeing, and at the same time serve as a threshold for exploring the contours of existence.

[ Artist Statement ]

Exploring “Invisible Presence” through Repetition and Transformation

We cannot see everything in the world directly, and we construct our own world based on the fragmentary information we obtain through our five senses. The limitation of this perception is that, as the philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) stated, we cannot perceive “things themselves” as they are, but only perceive the world as a phenomenon through our senses.
In the past, cubist artists presented new perspectives by deconstructing objects and reconstructing paintings. Today, when modes of perception and the framework of the senses themselves are in flux, how can we show the “invisible existence” outside of fragments through pictorial expression, which is visual art? This question is the basis of my work.

In my paintings, the following process is used to expand the outside and inside of the picture plane. First, in order to create a structure that expands outward, I paint images beyond the frame of the canvas, intentionally creating chips and margins. In addition, by using canvases that sometimes look as if they have been cut out, he introduces a structure that allows the viewer to imagine the outside of the picture plane.
Next, as for the images he paints on the inside, he mainly deals with two motifs. The other is something that is said to have existed in the past but cannot be fully grasped at present.

Instead of making sketches or sketches before moving on to the main painting, I first create three-dimensional objects using familiar objects. I position them as the source for constructing the paintings, and develop the images from physical perception. Furthermore, I incorporate historical objects that cannot be captured by my five senses, and elements that can only be grasped in fragments today, such as heritage, ruins, and folklore, as information that has been scattered throughout time. Through this process of production through the body, direct observation and fragments of the past intersect to form a multi-layered image.

The combination of these composite elements creates a “place” in which the paintings transcend the boundaries of fixed time and space and are constantly transformed by their interaction with the outside. There, through repeated observation of the subject, a new perception emerges. This repetition is not a mere reproduction of sameness, but rather a slight shift or change that opens new perspectives, which are renewed through the accumulation of minute differences. In this way, the work is not completed on the inside, but assumes the involvement of the viewer.

Thus, when confronted with a painting that is open both inside and outside, the viewer integrates fragments based on his or her own experience and imagines an extension of the depicted image. By constructing a subjectively supplemented world in the brain, I believe that my work will serve as a “device for showing invisible existence” that can only be completed when accompanied by the perception of others.

For me, creating a work of art is an act in which I, as a subject, confirm the phenomenon that emerges through me as a subject. This act involves a cycle of unconsciously forming hypotheses based on fragmentary sensory information and modifying them to form images, and I am consciously trying to capture this dynamic. Through this phenomenology-based perspective, I would like to explore how people perceive the world and how they can approach things beyond the range of their perception.

Today, when artificial intelligence is generating “something like perception” based on statistical estimation, the practice of painting may provide an opportunity to highlight once again the uniqueness of human perception mediated by the body. My aim is for my work to function as an interface that mediates contact with the “invisible,” and to become a new place where the boundaries of perception and existence intersect.

Yui Samejima