AYANE EGUCHI
Born in Hokkaido, Japan in 1985. Eguchi graduated with a master’s degree in Oil Painting from the Research Department of Fine Art and Craft at Kanazawa College of Art in 2011. At the first glance of her paintings, adorable characters such as teddy bears, a gentle world full of fluffy mushrooms and candies in cute colors are seen, but in reality, death and violence are blatantly expressed. Eguchi once created a Kusouzu (Buddhist theme painting, a set of nine paintings that shows the phases of human’s death from decay to bones and finally to dust, to eliminate the attachment to worries and the physical body) with cute bears and mushrooms. Rather than the concept of contrasting relation between Eros and Thanatos seen in the Western painting, her paintings are more about capturing the recurring cycle of life and death. It is not resurrection, but reincarnation. As a technique, the paint is thickened by layering, and the fluffy fur of the bear looks like the paint was scooped out to make it three-dimensional. The surface of the whole painting is murky white, and it is remarkable that behind the somehow sweet and cute colors lies bright colors that look like deadly poison. Death conceptually leads to impurity and fear in every culture, and people try to overcome it by daring and objectifying it. Eguchi’s work seems to attract the same kind of reception as the people who used to expect from religious and historical paintings. Her works were displayed at several exhibitions including “Tokyo Wonderwall Open Call 2009” (Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo), “Fuwa . Moko . Sarasa . Ra” (Tokyo Wondersite Hongo, Tokyo) in 2011, and “Viscera of the Vast Land” (Roppongi Hills A/D Gallery, Tokyo) in 2020…etc.