The names on the beach
Hikari MUKAI
Exhibition of Hikari Mukai, winner of the 1st BUG Art Award Grand Prize selected from a total of 415 entries, will be held!
We are pleased to present the 1st BUG Art Award Grand Prize Winner, Hikari Mukai’s solo exhibition “The Names on the Beach”, starting from Wednesday, February 19th, 2025. Hikari Mukai won the Grand Prize at the 1st BUG Art Award* for her work “Can’t See the Other Side”, which featured small sculptures, drawings and videos made from materials that everyone sees in their daily lives, such as straws, sand and mirrors, arranged on the sides and tops of white boxes that are about the same height as a person’s eye level. The judges praised her for her original perspective and ideas, as well as the way she had made the most of the BUG space in her exhibition. The aim of this exhibition is to support artists in their careers and encourage them to take on new challenges in their work.
Mukai values the process of giving form to the intuitive images that come to mind in everyday life. For example, she observes the way in which the movement of cars is controlled by the rules they follow, or the way in which the light shines through the bleached cloth floating in a bucket of water, and creates works based on these observations of the small details that we tend to overlook in our daily lives.
Since her time as a student at the Musashino Art University, Department of Sculpture, she has consistently created small three-dimensional works that can be held in both hands, combining familiar materials such as wood chips, glass and paper clay.
In this exhibition, she will use every inch of the 7.2m high ceiling space to create her largest-scale new work to date. Please come and see Mukai’s solo exhibition, which she has been preparing for about a year since winning the Bug Award.
* The BUG Art Award is an award for artists who have been active as an artist for less than 10 years. We provide feedback from the judges, hold consultation meetings about exhibitions and installation, provide other support, and we are also involved in the artists’ growth during the judging process.
About the exhibition
The meaning behind the exhibition title
The sand on the beach is made up of minerals and the remains of animals that have been broken down into tiny pieces by the power of the wind and waves and washed ashore. Even the smallest grains of sand used to have their own names. Mukai scoops up these small events, just as you might find an unremarkable grain of sand in your everyday life, and arranges and connects them, giving them new names.
For example, one of the works on display, “Cream Candle”, is based on multiple memories, including a scene from a movie that Mukai saw as a child, the contents of a book of conversations between sculptors that she read when she was a cram school student, and steel materials that she saw when she was a university student. In this way, Mukai creates works by connecting the trivial events of everyday life that have accumulated in her mind during the production stage.
The challenge as the winner of the 1st BUG Art Award Grand Prize
This exhibition will feature a total of 17 works, including new pieces. Until now, Mukai’s works have mainly been of a size that she could make herself, but this time she is taking on a new challenge by working with an installer, a specialist in exhibition construction and installation, to create a new work that will be the largest scale yet for her. In addition, through a dialogue with the judge and art scholar Kei Hirakura, who is of interest to Mukai, she has updated her exhibition plan by incorporating new perspectives on issues such as production costs, use of space, and arrangement of works. Mukai says that communicating about her works and plans to others has given her the opportunity to verbalize her activities and production, which have been difficult to put into words until now. Please come and see Mukai’s exhibition, which continues to grow through the BUG Art Award.
Talk event during the exhibition
On Monday, March 3rd, we will be holding a talk event with Junya Utsumi (curator at the Ishibashi Foundation Artizon Museum / Judge of the 1st BUG Art Award). We will be discussing the highlights of the exhibition and the background to the creation of the works.
In addition, we are planning to hold a workshop on Sunday, March 2nd, inviting Aisa Shirai and KEKE from the dance unit Aguyoshi, and another workshop on Sunday, March 9th and Saturday, March 15th, where you can experience some of the production process of Mukai’s work. We will announce the details on our website as soon as they are decided.
――――――――――――――――――
Event dates
――――――――――――――――――
①March 2nd (Sun) 2PM-4PM Guest: Aguyoshi Aisa Shirai, KEKE (dance unit)
②March 3rd (Mon) 7PM-8:30PM Guest: Junya Utsumi (curator, Ishibashi Foundation Artizon Museum)
③March 9th (Sun) 3PM-4:30PM Hikari Mukai Workshop
④March 15th (Sat) 3PM-4:30PM Hikari Mukai Workshop
※The dates and times of the events are subject to change. Please check the website for the latest information.
Born in Chiba Prefecture in 1998 and raised in Tokyo. Graduated from the Department of Sculpture, Faculty of Art and Design, Musashino Art University in 2022.
If she happens to walk past a pile of sand, she’ll make a sand pile. She will just pile up a little sand with my hands.
She will record even small events like the flow of grains of sand pushed by her hands as one of the vast number of events that occur in the universe. She will treat them on the same level as the explosion of a planet.
She makes sculptures by combining multiple materials and numerous events.
Recent activities include the solo exhibition “Linkskater” (WALLA, 2023), “Motegi Satoyama Art Festa” (Joyama Park, 2022), and the CSLAB x MELLOW seminar “Observations and Practices Regarding Gender” (Koganecho Area Art Management Center K-Library, 2019). She received the Excellence Award at the 2022 Musashino Art University Graduation and Completion Works Exhibition, and the Grand Prize at the 1st BUG Art Award (2024).
http://mukaihikari.com
Information
2025.2.19WED — 3.23SUN
11:00 — 19:00
Tuesdays
Free
BUG
