MEDEL GALLERY SHU HIBIYA is pleased to present MIMESIS, a solo exhibition by Rikito Kurosaki, on view from August 7 through August 20, 2026.

Rikito Kurosaki is a painter and graduate of the Department of Graphic Design at Tama Art University. His practice critically examines the structures of consumption and exploitation in contemporary society, exploring how images, objects, and systems of value are produced, circulated, and consumed.

The exhibition takes its title from the ancient Greek concept of mimesis, one of the central ideas in Western philosophy. Traditionally understood as imitation or representation, mimesis has long served as a framework for considering the relationship between art and reality. While Plato regarded artistic imitation as a copy removed from truth, Aristotle celebrated it as a creative act capable of generating knowledge and human understanding.

For MIMESIS, Kurosaki revisits this enduring philosophical discourse in the conditions of contemporary visual culture.

Today, we consume an immeasurable number of reproductions. Images proliferate through social media, artificial intelligence continuously generates new visual content, and digital platforms accelerate the endless circulation of information. Reproduction has become inseparable from consumption itself—a sophisticated mechanism through which value is rapidly shared, replicated, and exhausted.

As images are copied and redistributed, however, the singular presence once inherent to an original work gradually diminishes. Rather than sharing authentic value, we increasingly consume standardized symbols detached from their material origins.

In response, Kurosaki deliberately adopts reproduction as both his subject and artistic method. Through the physical act of repainting and reproducing images, subtle deviations inevitably emerge: errors, distortions, and traces of material resistance that cannot be eliminated. Rather than imperfections, these moments become evidence of painting’s irreducibility, suggesting that new forms of value arise precisely through the impossibility of perfect replication.

Against the backdrop of an increasingly digital society, the gallery offers a rare offline environment in which viewers encounter paintings as physical objects rather than endlessly reproducible images. To stand before the work is to experience a form of value grounded in material presence and embodied perception—an encounter that cannot be replicated through the act of scrolling.

Rather than proposing definitive answers, MIMESIS invites viewers to reconsider the relationship between originality, reproduction, and value, asking whether the future of artistic meaning might emerge not despite reproduction, but through the very fractures it inevitably creates.