Megumi Aoki

In her 2017 solo exhibition, Megumi Aoki used reflective stainless steel plates as a supportive substrate to create innovative, original works. In recent years, her practice has evolved to include several pieces where subjects are rendered in precise lines against astonishing backgrounds with a black color of unlimited depth. The effect is like an optical illusion, where faintly phosphorescent animals or flowers appear on the black canvas, leaving viewers with a highly impressionistic experience. From these contrasting approaches, in which reflective surfaces take advantage of external light and, more recently, in which light emerges from inside the work itself, we can see that she has explored the expressiveness of light from extremely opposing perspectives. We hope these latest developments in Aoki’s work and the way the subtle light of these pieces expresses the hidden power and energy of living things.