Projects | MAKI Gallery

EUGENE STUDIO / Eugene Kangawa

Eugene Room
2022/07/05-2022/11/26
Tennoz I, Tokyo

EUGENE STUDIO / Eugene Kangawa, “the Alive (sea)”, 2022 (detail)

MAKI Gallery is pleased to present Eugene Room, a special reservation-based project by EUGENE STUDIO / Eugene Kangawa held in a private space in Tennoz I, Tokyo. On view will be works from his White Painting series, Rainbow Painting series, and introducing for the first time, works from his Sea Drawings series—all of which are unreleased works created during or after the artist’s solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo where he was the youngest artist to ever hold a show at the museum.

【EUGENE STUDIO / Eugene Kangawa】

The EUGENE STUDIO is a Japan-based art studio headed by Eugene Kangawa (born 1989 in the USA). Working primarily in painting and installation, the EUGENE STUDIO’s immersive, visually stunning works—whether it be large-scale paintings on glistening brass, an artificial “sea” constructed inside a museum gallery, or a sculpture of a human figure created entirely by hand in total darkness—have the capacity to overwhelm one’s sense. However, this immense power is not used to transmit a specific message; rather, each work becomes a different philosophical exercise in which the viewer is encouraged to harness their imagination and come up with their own interpretations. In this way, the studio fosters open-ended dialogues on such abstract concepts as love, fate, and ephemerality, while inspiring greater attunement to the invisible forces that pervade natural and social realms.
The EUGENE STUDIO held its first solo exhibition, THE EUGENE Studio 1/2 Century later., at the Shiseido Gallery (Tokyo) in 2017. The studio has also participated in multiple projects with leading contemporary art museums in Japan, including the group shows de-sport at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa (2020) and AOMORI EARTH 2019 at Aomori Museum of Art, as well as the site-specific installation Shikkoku-Noh (Phantosia) at the National Art Center, Tokyo (2019). In 2021, the EUGENE STUDIO became the youngest artist in history to receive a solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo.