Masayuki Arai: Like Paintings

Primo Marella Gallery Milano is pleased to announce Like Paintings, Masayuki Arai's upcoming solo exhibition, opening on Thursday, May 22nd at 6 PM.

 

 

 

 

Throughout history, figurative and abstract art have often been seen as distinct, even opposing, approaches. Yet many artists have shown how fluid and permeable this boundary can be. Masayuki Arai (1984, Japan) positions himself precisely within this in-between space, where the two languages meet and intertwine.

Arai's unique and captivating style emerges through a series of deliberate, foundational steps that invite open interpretation. In recent years, he has developed a practice that is both refined and conceptually rich. Beginning with photographs affixed to the canvas, Arai gradually removes them, preserving only the surrounding painted extensions—imagined continuations that evolve beyond the original image.

This act is not a one-time gesture but part of a recurring process: new photographs are applied and later peeled away, while the painted margins expand, reinterpret, and reshape themselves with each iteration.

 

The result is a stratified visual language in which reality and imagination are inseparably woven together, dissolving the boundary between documentation and artistic invention.