Mayuka Yamamoto is one of Japan’s leading second-generation painters, after Yoshimoto Nara and Takashi Murakami, who are widely known for works featuring young children. Showing children in animal costumes and enigmatic expressions in her works, Yamamoto explores the reservoir of childhood subconscious and investigates child psychology as a segway into adult introspection. With the tenderness of her work, Yamamoto invites us on a journey of meeting difficult and deep-cut emotions of humans living in the modern age.
At first glance at Snow Rabbit, one is naturally captured by the endearing young boy dressed in a white bunny suit. Standing in a shallow snow pit, the boy looks to his left with celestial reflections in his wide blue eyes. The baby blue-tinged and transparent-looking background is pure and mysterious at the same time. Through the use of proportion, Yamamoto gives her little character predominance in the picture plain. The boy displays an interesting childlike maturity – a quality of innocent clarity and determination in his eyes, as though he is standing in the midst of unknown yet knowing where he is headed in his heart.
Since the 2000s, Yamamoto’s work has been exhibited extensively in solo and group shows in Asia, Europe, and the United States, and collected by public institutions in Japan. Her latest solo exhibition was held in Corey Helford Gallery in Los Angeles from 25 September - 30 October 2021.