Layered Resin Goldfish | Riusuke Fukahori at Joshua Liner

all images courtesy Joshua Liner Gallery

Finishing off our top picks of Japanese artists showing in New York this fall is Riusuke Fukahori. The 40-year old Yokohama-based artist will be making his debut solo exhibition in New York alongside his single obsession: goldfish.

Fukahori’s goldfish are not real, but can easily be mistaken for a living animal. Instead, the creations emerge and come to life from an incredibly meticulous process of layer after layer of paint, each separated – and held in place – by a single thin layer of resin.

Riusuke Fukahori: The Painted Breath
Joshua Liner, New York
11.21.13 – 01.18.14

If you want to learn more about the artist, this is what we wrote when we covered his work last year:

The goldfish holds a very special place in the heart of any child who’s ever been to a matsuri (street festival) in Japan. Kingyo-sukui is the game of “goldfish scooping” and is a staple of any summer street festival, along with the masks, water balloon yo-yos, fireworks and yummy food.

But for artist Riusuke Fukahori, the goldfish was not just a relic of long-lost childhood. As he painfully lay in his room one night, struggling and suffering, about to give up on his art, he looked over and saw a goldfish. His neglected fish of 7 years sputtered about in a cesspool of mold and feces – a common fate endured by most festival souvenirs.

Fukahori felt a shiver run down his spine. What he suddenly saw was a beautiful animal, glowing in bright red, living and surviving. The artist pulled out his paint and set to work, immediately triggering some sort of chemical reaction in his brain. Fukahori had looked far and wide – in Europe, the U.S. and Japan – for his muse. But in an instantaneous form of enlightenment he knew that all along it was right there in his room, inside that dirty fish tank. The goldfish, writes Fukahori, was my salvation.