Yoshimi Arts is pleased to present “The New Bananas”, a solo show by Keigo Kamide and a reconstruction based on the exhibition held this September at the Art Gallery in Matsuzakaya Nagoya Store. This exhibition is an attempt to recreate the distinctive atmosphere of the Japanese department store gallery, where Kamide has exhibited several times in the past, within the Yoshimi Arts space. By doing so, he hopes to extract a feeling of strangeness or incongruity.
Throughout his solo shows, such as “Isolated” (2011), “Floating” (2013), “Quiet Storm” (2014) at Yoshimi Arts, and “αM Project 2013: The Earthly Paradise, vol. 3 Keigo Kamide” (2013) at gallery αM, Kamide has comprehensively explored his artistic origins, the Kutani-ware, and placing himself within the context of the history of East Asian porcelain, has used methods that could be described as mythical to consider the time and place occupied by porcelain.
During the four years after this, he participated in solo shows such as “BEAR MOUNTAIN or MOUNTAIN BEAR” (2015, Matsuzakaya Nagoya Art Gallery), “Bears Live In The Hollow” (2016, Yoshimi Arts), “Forgotten banáns” (2017, Tokyo Nihombashi Takashimaya Art Gallery X), and “Porcelain Sculpture” (2018, Yokohama Takashimaya Art Gallery / 2019, Matsuzakaya Nagoya Art Gallery), expressing his environment and thoughts through the motif of a bear, and also rejecting the banana motif he had been creating since his graduation show at Tokyo University of the Arts. Then, by applying sculptural methods learned in his childhood to porcelain, he devoted himself to looking inwards and confronting himself, and attempted to make contact with something deeper within—memory. In 2019, for “The 14th Ceramic Art Grand Prize Exhibition” (Paramita Museum) and his solo show, “Still Life” (Yoshimi Arts), Kamide explored the idea of porcelain as sculpture. Using Kamide Choemon kiln products as motifs, he produced works with a sense of purity. Also, in his solo exhibition, “0years” (Yoshimi Arts), held in 2020 during the pandemic, he responded to the times by confronting various materials in an attempt to regain physicality in the face of the difficulty of meeting people, which we had previously taken for granted.
This exhibition will present his banana works for the first time at Yoshimi Arts, and five years after “Forgotten banáns” in 2017. When Kamide took a one-year period of leave from Tokyo University of the Arts, prior to his graduation exhibition, to return to his kiln and confront porcelain once again, he chose to first get in touch with the materials of Kutani-ware instead of just wholly accepting its history and techniques from the beginning. It was then he noticed that the unglazed state of an object resembled the texture of fruits and eggs, which led to the creation of banana and egg works. We could say the works were an embodiment, or were imbued with the simplicity and purity brought by the initial inspiration to start creative activity for the first time. Banana works became Kamide’s fundamental work as an artist and he has continuously been creating the series. In this exhibition, we will present his ten new banana works.

*translated by Penguin Translation