Ishiomiru / Ishiohirou by Haruna Shinagawa: Curated by Christian Barragán at Project Room

Saenger Gallery is pleased to present a new set of paintings by artist Haruna Shinagawa (Tokyo, 1995) in her second solo exhibition with the gallery. The exhibition is titled in Japanese “Ishiomiru / Ishiohirou” and translates into a double phrase that alludes both to the material construction of her painting and to an ancient oriental tradition: looking at the stones / picking up the stones.

For each exhibition, the artist has temporarily settled in Mexico City and during her stay she has specially created the work that she later exhibits at Saenger Galería; On this second occasion, the Project Room receives unpublished small and medium-format works from the Specimen series, never before seen in the West, and Peel off the paint, with a variant of two contrasting colors.

Since her first visit to Mexico, Haruna Shinagawa declared her interest in contemplating stones in relation to her own artistic practice, which at this moment makes total sense: “For me, seeing contemporary art is similar to observing small stones in the river . I am intrigued by studying the shapes and colors of stones, and that feeling of satisfaction is similar to looking at works of art. That feeling is what I try to express in my work.”

Shinagawa's work has a unique formal, technical and conceptual inventiveness, her work expands the possibilities of abstraction by extracting the expressive potential of materials and encourages different narrative events to emerge, from the identity of painting to the contemplation of stones in landscape, going through the transfiguration of painting into sculpture. 

— Christian Barragán