Keiko Aikawa
Exhibited artist
Keiko Aikawa is a Japanese artist born in Niigata Prefecture, and she graduated from the Visual Art Course, Visual Design Department, at Nagaoka Zokei University. Aikawa expresses complicated emotions by creating collages of old newspapers and portraits with oil. She had her first solo exhibition in 2014. Recent solo exhibitions include “Face in Face’ and “Complex Contours,” Medel Gallery Shu, Tokyo, Japan in 2022 and 2023 respectively. She has also participated in various group exhibitions at the Pola Museum Annex in 2023, Tokyo, Japan; and Gallery Jo Yana in Marseille, France in 2022.
Keiko Aikawa constantly challenges our perception towards human beings by transcending the ordinary human faces. She firmly believes that human faces are complex and the quotidian faces we see are superficial. With a gentle touch of Fauvism and Cubism, Aikawa thus abstracts and complexifies portraits with lines, shapes and forms to embody the intricacy of human emotions. This act of altering traditional portraits resembles an escape from fixed images. Faces are an intrinsic and the most noticeable part of our bodies. Her oeuvres therefore urge viewers to connect with themselves by rediscovering the complexity of human faces.
