Triumph Gallery presents a solo exhibition Exploring the Mind by Japanese artist Naoki Fuku. The project included paintings made in a peculiar expressionist manner and combining genre and stylistic features.

Love awaits
2020
Japanese ink on canvas
210 × 160 cm

Triumph Gallery presents a solo exhibition Exploring the Mind by Japanese artist Naoki Fuku. The project included paintings made in a peculiar expressionist manner and combining genre and stylistic features.

Naoki Fuku portrays sharp, intense feelings in an attempt to legitimize them. Each of the characters in the series personifies some kind of emotion, or is depicted as completely unemotional. The intensity of the emotions that the artist places in his paintings is inspired by the intensity and richness of today’s life: this gallery of expressed feelings can be called a response to the modern environment and blasiness that makes vivid sensations impossible. But still, according to the artist, in our unpredictable world there is a place for sincerity and hope.

Resist the Rain
2016
Canvas, graphite, ink, acrylic, brush pen
180 × 140 cm

Naoki Fuku portrays sharp, intense feelings in an attempt to legitimize them. Each of the characters in the series personifies some kind of emotion, or is depicted as completely unemotional. The intensity of the emotions that the artist places in his paintings is inspired by the intensity and richness of today’s life: this gallery of expressed feelings can be called a response to the modern environment and blasiness that makes vivid sensations impossible. But still, according to the artist, in our unpredictable world there is a place for sincerity and hope.

Expression is also expressed in the technique of work. Naoki uses unusual tools and techniques: he taps on the surface of the canvas with a bamboo stick and beats with his fist, leaving random traces of ink or paint that has not yet dried.

Naoki Fuku is inspired by portrait painters such as Marlene Dumas and Tai Shan Shirenberg, as well as by earlier painters such as Francis Bacon and Vincent van Gogh. Traditionally Japanese features and European practices are mixed in his work, and in the titles of portraits there are allusions to Japanese authors and classics of Russian literature. By combining elements of different cultures, the artist expands the range of available references and allows him to be more universal in relation to the viewer’s perception.

Curators: Marina Bobyleva, Artur Knyazev

It Was Me
2015
Canvas, Japanese ink
190 × 145 cm

Expression is also expressed in the technique of work. Naoki uses unusual tools and techniques: he taps on the surface of the canvas with a bamboo stick and beats with his fist, leaving random traces of ink or paint that has not yet dried.

Naoki Fuku is inspired by portrait painters such as Marlene Dumas and Tai Shan Shirenberg, as well as by earlier painters such as Francis Bacon and Vincent van Gogh. Traditionally Japanese features and European practices are mixed in his work, and in the titles of portraits there are allusions to Japanese authors and classics of Russian literature. By combining elements of different cultures, the artist expands the range of available references and allows him to be more universal in relation to the viewer’s perception.

Curators: Marina Bobyleva, Artur Knyazev