Chihiro Mori & Teppei Kaneuji Biography

Teppei Kaneuji (b. 1978) lives and works in Kyoto, Japan. Kaneuji earned a graduate degree in sculpture at Kyoto City University of the Arts in 2003. His work investigates the mass consumption of contemporary Japanese culture, sourcing materials from everyday life, found objects and manga characters to create sculpture that is at once playful and menacing. Kaneuji grafts together the detritus of overconsumption, creating candy-coloured sculptures and prints with Manga-influenced lines that are the product of the overly stimulating, image-saturated culture in which he was raised. His signature series, White Discharge, (2002 onwards), consists of architectonic constructions assembling action figures, plastic food, and other small objects, covered with goopy white resin. Static yet dynamic in form, the unlikely allure of these bricolage entities lies in their embodiment of estranged elements; be they physical or psychological, attributes are layered, rationalised and given a new life through complex arrangements. Kaneuji has exhibited at the Ichihara Lakeside Museum, Chiba, JP; Japan Society, New York, NY; Art Front Gallery, Tokyo, JP; Eslite Gallery, Taiwan, CN; Gallery αM, Tokyo, JP; Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Hiroshima, JP; Jane Lombard Gallery, Chelsea, NY; Kyotographie International Photography Festival, Kyoto, JP; Kyoto Art Center, Kyoto, JP; Kyoto and the International Manga Museum, Kyoto, JP; Marugame Geniciro-Inokuma Museum of Contemporary Art, Kagawa, JP; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, JP; Museum of Art, Seoul National University, Seoul, KR; National Museum of Singapore, SG; National Museum of Art, Osaka, JP; NYU Skirball, New York, NY; Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney, AU; ShugoArts, Tokyo, Japan; Singapore Tyler Print Institute, SG; Star Gallery, Beijing, CN; Ueno Royal Museum, Tokyo, JP; Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, CN and the Yokohama Museum of Art, Yokohama, JP.

Chihiro Mori (b. 1978) earned a graduate degree in painting at Kyoto City University of the Arts in 2005, lives and works in Kyoto, Japan. She has been making countless drawings as if she disgorges images of various visual memories that accumulate in the urban body, such as logotypes of companies, products and sports teams, or scenes from movies, to turn them into paintings by recomposing them as a collage. Doodles from her childhood when she was seeing the world in high-resolution, and a feel for their playful associations, have also been an important signpost for her journey of creation. By using Japanese washi paper which absorbs paint easily, or by creating semi-transparent pictures with layered glue, she experiments with different materials and plays with images in tangible forms, and its process itself represents the motivation for her to create paintings. Besides, it should not be overlooked that the artist's gaze contains objection, which stems from a sense of alienation, to the social norms prompted by images flooding the urban areas, and to the "mainstream" supported by the majority. Mori's work has been exhibited at Blum and Poe, Tokyo, JP; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin; Kurumaya Museum of Art, Oyama City, JP; Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, MN, USA; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, JP; The Museum of Architecture, Wroclaw, PL; Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Tokyo JP; National Museum of Art, Osaka, JP; Okinawa Art Museum, Okinawa, JP; Palais de Tokyo, Paris, FR; The Ueno Royal Museum, Tokyo, JP; Toyota Municipal Museum of Art in Aichi, JP and Whistle, Korea, alongside a host of additional international group and solo exhibitions.

Courtesy Jane Lombard Gallery