Whitestone Gallery Karuizawa is pleased to announce an exhibition “VORTEX” by Japanese contemporary artist MADARA MANJI―his second solo exhibition in Karuizawa.

MADARA MANJI attracts great deal of attention both domestically and internationally by his unique metal sculptures based on Japanese traditional ‘Mokume-gane’ technique, which is a sort of toreutic. In his first solo exhibition “Antagonism and Transcendence” held at Karuizawa New Art Museum in 2017, he made a vivid impression on visitors with his excellent use of materials and techniques, in which he visualized how his inner contradiction or discrepancy which are originally never compatible with others sublime by repeating collision and confrontation.

In this exhibition, three years thereafter, MADARA MANJI extends his theory and philosophy “the power of being mixed and together” that he has treated as an individual scale to “the relationship between self and others”. Universal contradiction like “desire and reason” or existing paradoxes in times and societies are effectively projected onto various materials by the magic of MADARA MANJI. In his universe, where all those elements are unified with his technique requiring strong energy, sum of the things wiggles in an object and transforms into an uncontrollable vortex of power, gradually increasing tensions.

While the phase where contradicted forces are transformed from ‘self-destruction’ to ‘self-reliance’ after confrontation and integration seems to represent unchangeable quality of human beings, it also exposes our arrogance in the society. His aesthetics flickering in the delicacy keeps nobility.