Auto Moai: Big Ass Beyond Mountains

AUTO MOAI started their artistic career in 2015, initially focusing on black-and-white drawings. In 2018, around the same time as the publication of the 300-page art book Endless Beginning (Funshosha), AUTO MOAI began to shift their focus to working with acrylic on canvas. At the book launch and art exhibition, they presented their new works together with the original drawings from the book, marking AUTO MOAI's transformation from an illustrator to a painter. From 2019 onwards, in addition to their simpler works, AUTO MOAI started to explore three-dimensional media and paintings; they were unveiled at the exhibition Permanent Boredom (2019, TAV Gallery, Tokyo) where the artist, with eloquence and calmness, voiced their opinion on events that were vaguely prevalent in the region and generation in which the artist took part in. AUTO MOAI has shown oil paintings in Buoy (2020, Calm & Punk Gallery, Tokyo) and How to Express Love in a World Gone Wrong (2021, Isetan the Space, Tokyo). Utilizing photographs of everyday life that exist as data on smartphones as a motif, AUTO MOAI confronted the ambiguity and uncertainty of seeing photographs, looking back on memories, and daily communications that take place with certitude — which laid down the tracks for the current exhibition. Figures without eyes and noses consistently appear in AUTO MOAI's works. They at times function as a trigger for the viewer to "decipher" or "contemplate" about the events depicted. In addition to oil paintings, acrylic paintings, and drawings, this exhibition Big Ass Beyond Mountains will also feature three-dimensional works by the artist. Seven years since they began making art and less than a year since the reveal of their first oil painting, AUTO MOAI is now showing their third oil painting with incredible energy and speed. Unlike before, this series of works seems to be bearing somewhat distant and ambiguous landscapes. Described as depicting "fragments of landscapes scooped up from memory", there are motifs that suggest a definite meaning or symbolisms of some kind within the picture plane. Although this is the same technique that was used in the book Endless Beginning, the focal point has shifted from portraying metaphors for things that are very individual and localized to things that are found in different regions and times. In the past, many of AUTO MOAI's works appeared to depict different time frames within a single image. Their current works seem to portray various parallaxes found in the awareness of reality, in remembering, and in cognitive disparities between dreams and memories. Perhaps it is a testament to AUTO MOAI's perspective on modern and progress forms of love and society. We hope you will take this opportunity to enjoy the works of AUTO MOAI who never ceases to evolve as an artist.