Yuichiro Ukai

Untitled, 2026

Colored pencil, marker, ink on paper

15 1/16 x 21 3/8 inches (38.3 x 54.3 cm)

Courtesy of Yukiko Koide Presents, Kyoto, and Parker Gallery, Los Angeles

Selected by Valérie Rousseau

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 and their iconography. Drawn on sequential sheets of brown paper, his dense images are built from memory to create his own world, a magical assemblage of seemingly eclectic characters. The artist incorporates a broad array of forms and figures from popular Japanese culture of all eras (samurai, yokai-monsters, Pokémon, and Ghibli animated films), but also includes his encyclopedic explorations of insects, dinosaurs, and skeletons into each frame. Ukai’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions in both the United States and Japan, at Venus Over Manhattan, Parker Gallery, and Yukiko Koide Presents. His work has been featured in group exhibitions including recent presentations at the Harvard University Asia Center, Cambridge; Christian Berst Art Brut, Paris; the American Folk Art Museum, New York; and the National Gallery of Art, Vilnius. His work is held in the permanent collection of the American Folk Art Museum, New York and the Shiga Museum, Otsu. Ukai lives and works in Shiga Prefecture, Japan.