Tomoyuki Ueno: Like the Flowing River

Artist Tomoyuki Ueno creates individual works and installations where nature appears to be in an endless conversation with form, one echoing the other, a repetition. They are a combination of certainty and ephemerality, as if hinged between living and loss. The specificity of Ueno’s sculptural works reads like poetry. Ueno’s IH Gallery installation, Like the Flowing River*, offers visitors time away, for contemplation, to draw inward, to come inside, to ask the question, “how are art and the everyday intertwined?” Honoring the Buddhist philosophy of impermanence, one becomes a continuation of the other. The artist creates space for a restorative and meditative experience.

The exhibition in the IH Gallery includes artworks created from natural materials foraged by the artist while in artist residency in Michigan.

*The title refers to the opening line of Hōjōki, written by 13th-century Japanese Buddhist monk Kamo no Chōmei: The flow of the river is ceaseless, and the water is never the same…

Tomoyuki Ueno was born in Kobe, Japan and lives in Berlin. Through his art practice, Ueno explores our connections to the natural world, often making work from found materials. He holds a Master of Inter Media Art from Tokyo University of the Arts and a Master of Art and Media from the University of the Arts, Berlin. Ueno has participated in residency programs at the Stiftung Insel Hombroich, Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Akiyoshidai International Art Village, and the Tusen Takk Foundation. He has shown his work internationally, notably at the Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art Print Art Triennale and the 6th Moscow International Biennale for Young Art.