Teppei Kaneuji

A Kyoto native Teppei Kaneuji earned a graduate degree in sculpture at Kyoto City University. By incorporating materials from everyday life, found objects, character figures and magazine clips into his idiosyncratic collage-style artworks, he questions people’s preexisting assessment and contexts in daily life. He has held numerous solo and group shows in the major venues around the glove such as the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, Yokohama Museum of Art, Mori Art Museum (Tokyo), and National Museum of Singapore. He is a recipient of Kyoto City’s Best Young Artist Award in 2012, and the Kyoto Prefecture Culture Prize Award in 2015.

Teppei Kaneuji investigates the mass consumption of contemporary Japanese culture, sourcing materials from everyday life, found objects and manga characters to create sculpture that is at once playful and menacing. Kaneuji grafts together the detritus of overconsumption, creating candy-colored sculptures and prints with Manga-influenced lines that are the product of the overly stimulating, image-saturated culture in which he was raised. His signature series, White Discharge, (2002 onwards), consists of architectonic constructions assembling action figures, plastic food, and other small objects, covered with goopy white resin. Static yet dynamic in form, the unlikely allure of these bricolage entities lies in their embodiment of estranged elements; be they physical or psychological, attributes are layered, rationalized and given a new life through complex arrangements.