I hope everyone is enjoying the season of beautiful hydrangea. On 1st of April 2010, Ippodo Gallery opened two solo exhibitions of Yoko Semoto in Tokyo and New York at the same time, and both exhibitions evaluated highly by our customers. At Gotenyama, Tokyo, the exhibition was held under beautiful cherry blossoms and was like a petit museum, and at Chelsea, New York, it was the artist's first solo exhibition in overseas. The works presented in New York come back to Tokyo this month and we are pleased to exhibit the decorative tempera paintings by Yoko Semoto for the people in Tokyo. It has been the artist's fifty years of challenge.

Keiko Aono, Ippodo Gallery

In the spring time in New York, after a long cold winter, we could open Yoko Semoto Exhibition on a sunny day, 1st of April 2010. At the opening party, thirty pieces of her work including "Spring Thunder" and "Spring Wind" filled and shined our gallery, where we had a live music of Bach and Faure. About eighty people gathered, and everyone looked deeply impressed by the paintings' shining gold, bright colors, pure drawings, and the fantasies that evoke feelings of euphoria. With admiration, New York customers told us that the paintings has a style they had never seen, and the beautiful paintings inspired them power. Throughout the exhibition, many customers visited Ippodo gallery by seeing our windows and took time to enjoy close and far views of the paintings. In Chelsea, many customers just drop galleries and go out without saying anything, but in this exhibition, a lot of people asked us about the artist's technique and left message like they finally met a real art, or they had never seen such paintings. An artist also dropped and encouraged by the life of a female artist Yoko Semoto, who has kept her style and has done nothing but paint for fifty years.

In the modern world, media such as photographs, videos, and installations are representing arts and concepts and novelty are valued than techniques. In this trend, I felt that people in New York were so impressed by the fact that a Japanese woman purely concentrated on her own style tempera painting, which is 800 years old European technique, and really admired her works. Every painting by Yoko Semoto is new even in modern time, and unique in anywhere, and inspires energy to anyone. I could not imagine how American people think of medieval Italian tempera paintings as a Japanese contemporary art. Interestingly, they said they could identify Semoto's paintings are Japanese art. American customers pointed that although the paintings are nuanced by Christianity and Renaissance art, they are still Japanese, because the artist's naive, pure, serious expression is a typical Japanese sensibility, even though sceneries and motives are western. Yoko Semoto is truly unique artist who fuses European and Asian cultures. I was so happy that Ippodo could hold a true art exhibition in Chelsea, New York, and I am really grateful to the artist, Yoko Semoto.

Shoko Aono, Ippodo Gallery New York