YUICHIRO UKAI

"Untitled", 2023

Colored pencil, marker, oil pastel, and ink on cardboard

Unframed: 15 3/16 x 21 7/16 inches (38.6 x 5.5 cm)

Framed: 17 ¾ x 24 inches (45.1 x 61 cm)

Courtesy of the Artist and Venus Over Manhattan

Selected by Brian Donnelly (KAWS) 

Yuichiro Ukai was born in 1995 in Shiga Prefecture, Japan. Following his graduation from high school in 2014, Ukai became a member of the distinguished Atelier Yamanami, a live-work facility that offers employment, training, and arts enrichment programs for individuals with neurodiversity or disabilities. Ukai is celebrated for his richly detailed drawings that incorporate references to manga and anime, as well as historical Japanese epics. Drawn on sequential sheets of brown paper, his dense images are built from memory to create a visual assemblage of seemingly eclectic characters. The artist incorporates a broad array of forms and figures from popular Japanese culture (samurai, yokai-monsters, Pokémon, and skeletons), but also includes his encyclopedic explorations of insects, dinosaurs, and popular icons into each frame. Ukai’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions in both the United States and Japan, at Venus Over Manhattan and Yukiko Koide Presents. His work has featured in group exhibitions including recent presentations at the Harvard University Asia Center, Cambridge; Christian Berst Art Brus, Paris; the American Folk Art Museum, New York; and the Shiga Museum, Otsu. His work is held in the permanent collection of the American Folk Art Museum, New York. Ukai lives and works in Shiga Prefecture, Japan.