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Surface of a Mirror 2023, Oil on canvas, 91 x 91㎝ ／ ©Korehiko Hino
Korehiko Hino “Human and Shadow”
session：2024.4.5 fri - 5.18 sat 13:00 - 19:00
＊closed on Sun, Mon, Tue and public holidays.
venue：SNOW Contemporary
opening reception : 2024.4.5fri 17:00 - 19:00
SNOW Contemporary is pleased to present Korehiko Hino’s solo exhibition, “Human and Shadow”, which will be held from April 5 (Friday) to May 18 (Saturday), 2024.
Korehiko Hino (b. 1976 in Wajima, Ishikawa Prefecture) won the VOCA Prize at the 2005 VOCA Exhibition. With his unique style of depicting human figures that substantially impact the audience, Hino has drawn much attention and attracted many fans within Japan and abroad ever since. After receiving the VOCA Prize, he has continued to vigorously pursue new expressions through working with various media, including watercolor and colored pencil drawing and sculpture, as well as oil painting.
In Hino’s portraits, the figures themselves are depicted as a foreground. As Hino says, he "wants to get rid of a narrative and extract only the pure sense of human existence.” Highlighting the human presence emphasizes the body as a vessel for emotion and spirit.
The artist states, “I think the resulting empty images reflect my state of mind and the atmosphere surrounding those living today." The figures depicted in his work seem to speak for the feelings of anxiety, loneliness, and emptiness that people today experience daily.
In this solo exhibition, his first in two and a half years, Hino will showcase about ten new oil paintings and drawings.
As the exhibition title “Human and Shadow” suggests, these new works portray human figures and shadowy motifs that seem inseparable from them, presenting a more complex mentality and intense images.
We cordially invite you to experience the new world of the human figure depicted by Hino.
*Artist Statement
This exhibition consists of new works created between 2022 and 2024.
I titled the exhibition “Human and Shadow” because it’s composed of paintings presenting motifs with no substance or blur substance, such as figures reflected in mirrors, masks resembling human figures, translucent clothing, and bodies distorted by water droplets. The title is also based on the fact that in my work, I depict actual human beings as shadow-like entities that are difficult to grasp.
These ideas have become strongly present in my mind after the production between 2019 and 2022.
During these four years, I painted while looking directly at human models. I didn’t use any photographs in some works. Painting while looking at a living model made me aware of how the model’s body and my perspective would keep moving subtly while seemingly remaining still and how the light keeps shifting. It was an experience of rediscovering the fluctuations emitted by a living person and the elusive shadow-like presence that changes through repeated observation and depiction. In the process of taking time to make a single painting based on a living model, distortions would be caused by misalignments and inconsistencies. The distorted image and the image that reminds me of the unstable psychological state in the inner life of a human came together in my mind.
The idea of directly feeling the human presence made me attempt to paint while looking at a model. Until then, I used to take photographs of myself and refer to them while adding deformations as I went along. I took this method roughly from 2003 to 2018. I intended to manipulate facial expressions, poses, body shapes, and clothing to portray a person who does not evoke a specific emotion, age, gender, or situation. The source of this act was the desire to get rid of narratives and extract only a pure sense of human presence.
At the same time, the underlying idea was that the resulting empty images would reflect my mind and the atmosphere surrounding those living in the present.
session：2024.4.5 fri - 5.18 sat 13:00 - 19:00
＊closed on Sun, Mon, Tue and public holidays.
venue：SNOW Contemporary
opening reception : 2024.4.5fri 17:00 - 19:00
SNOW Contemporary is pleased to present Korehiko Hino’s solo exhibition, “Human and Shadow”, which will be held from April 5 (Friday) to May 18 (Saturday), 2024.
Korehiko Hino (b. 1976 in Wajima, Ishikawa Prefecture) won the VOCA Prize at the 2005 VOCA Exhibition. With his unique style of depicting human figures that substantially impact the audience, Hino has drawn much attention and attracted many fans within Japan and abroad ever since. After receiving the VOCA Prize, he has continued to vigorously pursue new expressions through working with various media, including watercolor and colored pencil drawing and sculpture, as well as oil painting.
In Hino’s portraits, the figures themselves are depicted as a foreground. As Hino says, he "wants to get rid of a narrative and extract only the pure sense of human existence.” Highlighting the human presence emphasizes the body as a vessel for emotion and spirit.
The artist states, “I think the resulting empty images reflect my state of mind and the atmosphere surrounding those living today." The figures depicted in his work seem to speak for the feelings of anxiety, loneliness, and emptiness that people today experience daily.
In this solo exhibition, his first in two and a half years, Hino will showcase about ten new oil paintings and drawings.
As the exhibition title “Human and Shadow” suggests, these new works portray human figures and shadowy motifs that seem inseparable from them, presenting a more complex mentality and intense images.
We cordially invite you to experience the new world of the human figure depicted by Hino.
*Artist Statement
This exhibition consists of new works created between 2022 and 2024.
I titled the exhibition “Human and Shadow” because it’s composed of paintings presenting motifs with no substance or blur substance, such as figures reflected in mirrors, masks resembling human figures, translucent clothing, and bodies distorted by water droplets. The title is also based on the fact that in my work, I depict actual human beings as shadow-like entities that are difficult to grasp.
These ideas have become strongly present in my mind after the production between 2019 and 2022.
During these four years, I painted while looking directly at human models. I didn’t use any photographs in some works. Painting while looking at a living model made me aware of how the model’s body and my perspective would keep moving subtly while seemingly remaining still and how the light keeps shifting. It was an experience of rediscovering the fluctuations emitted by a living person and the elusive shadow-like presence that changes through repeated observation and depiction. In the process of taking time to make a single painting based on a living model, distortions would be caused by misalignments and inconsistencies. The distorted image and the image that reminds me of the unstable psychological state in the inner life of a human came together in my mind.
The idea of directly feeling the human presence made me attempt to paint while looking at a model. Until then, I used to take photographs of myself and refer to them while adding deformations as I went along. I took this method roughly from 2003 to 2018. I intended to manipulate facial expressions, poses, body shapes, and clothing to portray a person who does not evoke a specific emotion, age, gender, or situation. The source of this act was the desire to get rid of narratives and extract only a pure sense of human presence.
At the same time, the underlying idea was that the resulting empty images would reflect my mind and the atmosphere surrounding those living in the present.
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