The Silence of the Red Museum.

When you step into an art museum or a museum, you are enveloped in an atmosphere that either calms your heart or makes you straighten your posture. Your senses are sharpened to every corner of your body by the power of the space and the stimulation of the five senses by the artworks.
In this exhibition, 'MUSEUMS,' I am displaying many paintings themed around art museums, and the exhibition space itself is linked to the works. I am focusing on the fact that art museums not only have the function of displaying art, but also possess aesthetic beauty as architectural structures. The way light shines into the wide and complex spatial structure, the pure architectural beauty, and all the elements intertwine to show ever-changing expressions that never tire the viewer. I am presenting 'MUSEUMS' as I interpret it, through paintings created by multi-perspective research of various art museums around the world, and an exhibition space that links to those paintings.

—Motifs and Fetishism
The motifs depicted in my works are closely related to a fetishism for materials. I have a fetish for the corners of certain objects (self-proclaimed: corner fetish), and I often use things that trigger this fetish as motifs. I don't love all corners indiscriminately; for example, I like things that are semi-matte, translucent, and square. Like the cross-section of yokan (sweet bean jelly), solid soap, acrylic plates, or rice cakes before they are grilled. In my childhood, I would constantly stroke the transparent cube attached to my favorite hair tie. 'If you cut Yoneyama's painting, it would look like yokan' is the most uplifting compliment I have ever received. In fact, I have a sense that the canvas, while being a support, is also an extension of the motifs within the frame, which is reflected in the thickness of the canvas sides. Such a sense of fetishism often reacts to various parts of an art museum, leading to the serialization of works titled 'Museum'.

—The Interchange of Figuration and Abstraction
Along with the sense of fetishism that reacts to the characteristics of the motifs themselves, I am simultaneously focusing on the state of light and shadow, the assimilation of ground and figure due to the matching brightness of the motifs, the geometric space, and the rhythm of whiteness and blackness. All the objects and spaces depicted are things I have actually seen. I record on canvas the phenomena occurring in real, existing spaces, while stripping away some information to give a sense of the interchange between figuration and abstraction. Figurative spaces are replaced by red gradations, and shapes that protrude in white are arranged abstractly, transforming into a space perceived geometrically. Areas of the same brightness painted in one tone fuse completely on the screen, giving birth to new forms. Multiple object-spaces within the frame intertwine as shapes, and the non-fiction tells a small lie.

—Cold and Odorless Red
The starting point for the expression possible only because I paint in one tone is charcoal drawing. Even now, oil painting and drawing are two sides of the same coin; I perceive paintings by brightness rather than hue, and I hardly use white paint. Initially, I painted in a single tone of brownish-brown, like the classical camaieu technique, but it gradually changed to reddish-brown, and finally to bright red. Since red has been a universal color for me, just as much as black and white, for a long time, that transition was almost unconscious. Red, which evokes fire and passion and has a hot image, is a cold and inorganic color to me, and on my paintings. A somehow comfortable contrast, a shape that is beautiful as a figure. An odorless red that doesn't say much, supporting that expression and visual.

—Paintings and Materials
The canvas uses a blend of cotton and synthetic fibers. I used linen for a long time, but I feel a mechanical coldness in the cotton-synthetic blend, and the paints I use are mainly inorganic pigments, which makes it easier to interact with the silent paintings. Also, the red pigment I use has a very high refractive index of around 2.7, providing high covering power. Strictly speaking, the greater the difference from the refractive index of the oil, the higher the covering power, and since oil is around 1.5 with little variation depending on the type, the difference increases as the refractive index of the pigment increases. The profound gradation due to the high covering power and the transparent layer made of blended oil that studies the compatibility with the pigment support the painting materially. All these elements are my aesthetics, and what is embodied is my painterly expression. This exhibition, where my unique aesthetics are scattered in every corner of the space, possesses a feeling that cannot be produced by logic, much like when you step into an art museum or a museum.
2025.01.11 Yuka Yoneyama