Yusuke Abe / Check-in / Side Space, Hong kong

Check in at Side Space HongKong Introducing our participating artist represented by 4649, Yusuke Abe:

Yusuke Abe was born in Yamagata, Japan, and currently lives and works in Saitama. Centered on painting, his practice combines oil and spray painting while incorporating various heterogeneous materials such as plastic, cards, video game software, and wood. Through collage and layering, these elements form complex compositions that exist between the flatness of painting and the presence of relief.

Abe’s work draws largely from personal memories and formative experiences. Childhood activities in nature—such as fishing and collecting insects—alongside video games, card games, and the unconscious doodles left in the corners of notebooks and textbooks, frequently reappear as visual motifs. Insects, fish, and monster-like characters often populate his paintings. Abe has noted that in his work these motifs are “completely equal in existence” to a casual line drawn with a brush. Just as insects inhabit grasslands, fish live in water, and monsters belong to the worlds of trading cards or video games—each existing according to the rules of its own environment—this perspective gradually led him to realize that humans likewise live within the limited framework of what we call the “human world.”