Shinoda Taro, Katsura 17, 2021, Oil on canvas, 120 × 95 × 8 cm
Toward the Phenomenon of Painting
Shinoda Taro, Shingo Francis, Maeda Saki, Shigihara Yuka
Saturday, March 14 – Saturday, April 11, 2026
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 14, 17:00-19:00
Hours: Tuesday – Saturday 12:00-19:00 (Closed on Mon, Sun, Public holidays)
Press Release
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MISA SHIN GALLERY is pleased to present Toward the Phenomenon of Painting a group exhibition featuring works by Shinoda Taro, Shingo Francis, Maeda Saki, and Shigihara Yuka, on view from March 14 to April 11, 2026.
Shinoda Taro’s KATSURA series quietly departs from conventional frameworks of painting while employing traditional oil painting materials, such as linen canvas primed with rabbit-skin glue and walnut oil as a binding medium. The canvases embrace expansive areas of blank space; their surfaces gently curve inward from the edges toward the center, forming a shallow concavity. Only at the center do abstract fields of color and grid-like lines emerge. Encountering these works, viewers find themselves uncertain of where to stand or how much distance to take in order to see them. Shinoda began his career as a Japanese landscape gardener, and his discomfort with conventional two- or three-dimensional spatial perception led him to connect painting to a structure that understands space not as separate dimensions, but as a single continuum. This approach closely resonates with the spatial structure of the Katsura Imperial Villa, where space is inseparable. In this sense, the distance from which a painting is viewed becomes a collective cultural and bodily assumption we unconsciously share. The KATSURA series—Shinoda’s final body of work—originated from a fundamental reexamination of these assumptions.
Shingo Francis, Cycles of Illumination (pale blue), 2025, Oil on canvas, 122 x 122 cm
Shingo Francis has long been known for his abstract paintings dominated by layered blues and deep monochromes. In recent years, he has developed the Interference series, which employs special materials that create optical interference effects. Depending on the viewer’s position, angle, and the time of day, colors shift and emerge, producing a visual experience that cannot be fully captured through images on a screen. The perceptual fluctuations that arise between light, color, and shadow extend from morning to dusk and through the changing seasons, drawing viewers into natural rhythms. While resonating with post-minimalism and the California Light and Space movement, Francis’s paintings also embody an Eastern sensibility rooted in Zen and natural philosophy. Though physically static, these works function as perceptual fields that open onto planetary, and even cosmic scales of time.
Maeda Saki, tension 25_26, 2025, Oil on canvas, 145.5 x 112 cm
Maeda Saki’s paintings sustain a finely tuned balance between tension and harmony—between composition and chance, abstraction and materiality, sensation and reason. Diagonal lines cutting across the surface, layered triangular forms, and carefully controlled fields of color maintain equilibrium while always containing the potential for collapse. The distinctive textures produced through Maeda’s unique use of a palette knife in oil painting veil the surface like frosted glass, prompting the viewer to imagine what lies beyond. Accents of gold, silver, white, and black against a predominantly blue palette generate visual reversals between foreground and background, light and shadow, evoking a quiet oscillation between two- and three-dimensional perception. In her most recent works, the introduction of elements approaching linearity generates heightened tension, sharpening the boundary between balance and instability.
Shigihara Yuka, Night, 2025, Oil on canvas, 112 x 162 cm
This exhibition marks Shigihara Yuka’s first presentation at MISA SHIN GALLERY. Shigihara’s painting practice treats the construction of the support and the act of painting as a continuous process. From the moment she stretches linen over wooden frames and applies the ground, the work begins. She intentionally leaves unevenness and traces of action in the ground, repeatedly layering and wiping away thinly diluted oil paint. Through this repetition, images emerge beyond the artist’s intention—not preconceived representations, but <landscapes> appearing as latent images shaped by the interaction of material, time, and light. Rather than actively composing these images, Shigihara seeks to preserve them as they appear on the canvas. Her approach is strongly influenced by heliography, the earliest photographic technique, which records phenomena produced by light itself. Shigihara’s paintings trace a process reminiscent of development, returning to the very moment in which a landscape comes into being. The quietly absorbed pigments function simultaneously as paint and as light, evoking internal landscapes within the viewer’s perception.
What unites the practices of the four participating artists is an understanding of painting not as an object to be interpreted through what is depicted, but as a site for experiencing how we encounter the world and how perception itself is generated. When viewers stand before the works, bringing their own bodies and sense of time, painting once again becomes a medium that subtly transforms our perception and understanding of the world.
An opening reception with the artists will be held on the first day of the exhibition.
Shingo Francis, Maeda Saki, and Shigihara Yuka will be present.
We warmly invite you to join us.
Shinoda Taro
1964–2022. Born in Tokyo. After studying landscape gardening, Shinoda began his artistic career. His practice consistently and deeply interrogated the relationship between humans and nature, spanning drawing, sculpture, video, and installation, and earning wide international recognition. His works are held in public collections including the Mori Art Collection and the Fondation Louis Vuitton. He participated in numerous exhibitions in Japan and abroad, such as the Saitama Triennale (2020), Martin-Gropius-Bau (Berlin, 2019), the Sydney Biennale (2016), the Sharjah Biennial (2015), Mori Art Museum (Tokyo, 2010), and Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art (2002).
Shingo Francis
Born in 1969 in Santa Monica, California. Based in Los Angeles and Kamakura. Francis is an artist who has continuously explored spatial expansiveness and spirituality in painting. His representative works include multilayered blue abstractions, deeply colored monochromes, and the Interference series, which employs specialized materials to produce shifting light and color depending on the viewing angle. He has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Japan and internationally, including the Sezon Museum of Modern Art (Nagano, 2018), Martin Museum of Art (Texas, 2019), Ginza Maison Hermès Forum (Tokyo, 2023), and Chigasaki City Museum of Art (Kanagawa, 2024). His works are held in collections such as the JP Morgan Chase Art Collection, Banco de España, Frederick R. Weisman Foundation, Mori Art Collection, Sezon Museum of Modern Art, and Chigasaki City Museum of Art.
Maeda Saki
Born in 1993 in Fukui Prefecture. Graduated from Kyoto University of the Arts, Department of Fine Arts, Oil Painting Course. Centering on the tension and harmony that arise between composition and chance, abstraction and materiality, sensation and reason, Maeda produces paintings characterized by distinctive palette-knife textures and refined color structures. Major solo exhibitions include GALLERY TOMO (Kyoto, 2019), Accumulating as we pass by at YUKIKOMIZUTANI (Tokyo, 2022), and Interplay at MISA SHIN GALLERY (Tokyo, 2025). Her works are held in collections including DMG MORI CO., LTD. and OCA TOKYO (Mitsubishi Estate Co., Ltd.). In March 2025, she installed a public artwork along the banks of the Asuwa River in Fukui Prefecture.
Shigihara Yuka
Born in 2000 in Kanagawa Prefecture. Completed her MFA in Painting at Tokyo University of the Arts in 2024. Treating support preparation and painting as an integrated process, Shigihara creates works that preserve landscapes as latent images emerging from the action of materials. Her solo exhibitions include A Place of Certainty at JINEN GALLERY (Tokyo, 2024) and Wind Cage at Gallery Blue3143 (Tokyo, 2025).