PRESS RELEASE

Sayaka Toda Solo Exhibition“Lying in the Land of Overgrown Weeds”■PeriodApril 8th (Saturday), 2023 - May 13th (Saturday), 2023
*temporarily closed from April 29 (Sat) - May 9 (Tue)■HoursWednesdays through Saturdays, 13:00 - 19:00(closed on Sundays, Mondays, Tuesdays, and National Holidays)■VenueKANA KAWANISHI GALLERY
4-7-6 Shirakawa, Koto-ku, Tokyo 135-0021 JAPANtel +81 3 5843 9128 e-mail gallery@kanakawanishi.com▼OPENING RECEPTION
April 8th (Saturday), 2023 18:00-19:00

Study for Tall Goldenrod #1
2023 | 420 × 295 mm | ink on paper | ©︎ Sayaka Toda, courtesy KANA KAWANISHI GALLERY■Please contact below for any image enquiries■
KANA KAWANISHI GALLERY PR: Jun Orikasa Exhibition: Kana Kawanishi

gallery@kanakawanishi.com +81 (0)3-5843-9128

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PRESS RELEASE

KANA KAWANISHI GALLERY is pleased to announce the opening of Sayaka Toda’s Solo Exhibition, Lying in theLand of Overgrown Weeds on Saturday, April 8th, 2023.

Sayaka Toda has been attracting attention as a painter who connotes an implicit world of beauty anddisfigurement, which are inextricably linked with each other. She also held a solo exhibition of photographic
expressions only at Kana Kawanishi Photography in 2021, showing her universal expression regardless of media. In
this solo exhibition at Kana Kawanishi Gallery, Toda will break new ground as an artist by composing the exhibition
with not only her paintings but also photographs.

In this exhibition, her motif is an atelier of a deceased artist which will soon be dismantled. The artist says that thecountless plaster sculptures of female nudes rotting away in obscurity uncontrollably aroused her creative urge. In
addition to the axis of beauty and disfigurement that has been a consistent theme to her, this exhibition also includes
existence and oblivion, the human world and the natural world, the Western culture and the Eastern culture, womenand men, and more others, reminding us that two opposing things are commonly at a root of one.

We cordially invite all to this occasion where Sayaka Toda, the artist genuinely concerned with cultivating andextracting her own worldview, will present a solo exhibition composed of photography, a medium capturing theoutside world, and paintings, a medium expressing one’s inner nature for the very first time.

■Please contact below for any image enquiries■
KANA KAWANISHI GALLERY PR: Jun Orikasa Exhibition: Kana Kawanishi

gallery@kanakawanishi.com +81 (0)3-5843-9128

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PRESS RELEASE

Lying in the Land of Overgrown Weeds

An atelier is the garden of an artist’s creation, a trace of one’s soul. An atelier of one sculptor will soon be demolished
due to redevelopment. The shadows of the nameless women who lost their master are reflected in the dim lightcoming in through the large north-facing window. Each of them sleeps quietly here, surrounded by weeds, until thetime they go to the deceased's acquaintance.
In the late 19th century, Western concepts were imported to Japan, and artists followed the Western model ofexpressing the female nude as an accumulation of physical beauty without humanity. The obsessively created nude
women seem to be a symbol of the times. The way the plants cover them and the way they are to disappear is brought
to life in the contemporary age through my eyes as a female artist.

Sayaka Toda

Artist Profile
Sayaka Toda was born in 1988 in Saitama, Japan. She completed her M.F.A. at Joshibi University of Art and Design,Graduate School of Art and Design, Fine Arts Course, Painting in 2012.
Her major solo exhibitions include “The glitter of the shadow and color of the light” (2023, GALLERY MERROW, Tokyo),“Across the Sea, or Beyond the Night” (2021, KANA KAWANISHI PHOTOGRAPHY, Tokyo), “Where the beauty is” (2011,KINOSHO KIKAKU, Tokyo). Group exhibitions include “Sono Aida #COVID-19” (2020-, online exhibition), “Seeing theUnseen” (2016, Gallery Ohrin, Ibaraki, Japan), “Wonderful My Art” (2013, Kawaguchiko Museum of Art, Yamanashi, Japan), “TOTHE FUTURE” (2012, Mizuma Action, Tokyo), and “The 31st Outstanding Rising Artists Exhibition in 2012 Presented bySompo Japan Fine Art Foundation” (2012, Seiji Togo Memorial Sompo Japan Nipponkoa Museum of Art, Tokyo).
Major awards include “Art Award Tokyo Marunouchi 2010” Kazue Kobata Prize and “Shell Art Award” shortlist (2010).

■Please contact below for any image enquiries■
KANA KAWANISHI GALLERY PR: Jun Orikasa Exhibition: Kana Kawanishi

gallery@kanakawanishi.com +81 (0)3-5843-9128

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