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
Statement by the artist

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.

Yui Samejima