Solo exhibition "Time and Memory", by Takashi Fukushima

After a hiatus of almost a decade without holding a solo exhibition, Takashi Fukushima open “Time and memory" at Front GalleryComprising 31 works produced between 2000 and 2025, the 75-year-old artist presents a unique and, at the same time, mature and timeless body of work, marked by the poetic depth and formal integrity that characterize his career. The exhibition is accompanied by an exclusive publication, with a curatorial text by Fabio Magalhaes, which broadens the interpretation of this silent yet profoundly eloquent production. The free exhibition runs until November 22.

Relevant and unique in the contemporary Brazilian painting scene, Fukushima has developed a distinctive aesthetic language over more than five decades, in which Japanese tradition interacts with the contemporary, thus giving rise to subtle, meditative, and rigorous compositions. For this exhibition, Braque and Morandi serve as inspiration for his still life paintings. At the same time, the artist presents gestural and dense works, in which color, form, and memory are tensioned on vibrant surfaces. Fábio adds in his text: "His canvases present visual poetics of stability and movement, of the interplay between the perennial and the transitory. In other words, the artist combines expressions of repose, where time seems to sleep, with those of agitation, in which time rushes and devours. In this approach to space and time, there are no boundaries between the real and the imaginary. Takashi develops his language between figuration and abstraction, between the literal and the metaphorical."

Another highlight of the artist's creations is the force of nature, which, even when subjective, is present. A multi-artist—Fukushima is a painter, engraver, draftsman, and set designer—he has, as Magalhães mentions, "a visual expression of intimate connection with nature, sensitive to the time that changes all things. The artist establishes poetics of transformation in a natural world in constant movement. He is concerned with the time of memory, the product of experiences, knowledge, and desires—that is, a notion of time that does not exist in the material itself, but that is added to it as human nature."

Takashi's works are an invitation to contemplation, pause, and visual listening. It's important to emphasize that, in a world of constant change, his works articulate antagonistic movements, of order and disorder, of imagination and reality. Fukushima's works provoke an attraction to the ineffable and prompt reflection on mysterious, sublime places. For Acácio Lisboa, director of Galeria Frente, promoting an exhibition like this is a special moment in the gallery's history, and in the Brazilian art scene. "Having with us an artist of Takashi Fukushima's stature, in whom history and aesthetics are in unison, is a great honor and an exhibition sure to be memorable."

Service
Exhibition | Time and memory
From September 22th to November 22th
Monday to Friday 10am to 17pm, Saturday 10:30am to 13pm, closed on Sundays and holidays