Tomoko Konoike (鴻池朋子) (born 1960) is a Japanese contemporary multimedia artist. She is best known for her large-scale installations and Nihonga-style surreal paintings.
Biography Konoike was born in Akita, Japan. She graduated from the Department of Japanese Painting at the Tokyo University of the Arts. She worked as a toy designer before becoming a professional artist in 1988. She took a short hiatus from her artistic practice after the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami.
Artwork As an artist, Konoike explores themes from mythology, folklore, and nature to create surreal and vibrant depictions of humans and animals in a range of media. Her work includes animation, drawing, painting, mixed-media sculpture and installations, textiles, and prints.
Konoike regularly exhibits her work solo both in Japan and abroad, and has taken part in several international group exhibitions. Her work is included in the collections of museums such as the Art Institute of Chicago, the Mori Art Museum, the Ohara Museum of Art, and the Spencer Museum of Art In 2016, Konoike was awarded the Japanese Ministry of Education’s Art Encouragement Prize for her solo exhibition Primordial Violence.
Exhibitions
Solo exhibitions The Planets Are Temporarily Hidden by Clouds, 2006, Mizuma Gallery, Naka-Meguro Chapter #0, 2006, Ohara Museum of Art, Okayama Inter-Traveller (Playing with Myth), 2009, Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery Earthshine, 2013, Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco Skin, Needle, Thread, 2016, Niigata Bandaijima Art Museum Primordial Violence, 2015-17, Kanagawa Kenmin Hall, the Museum of Modern Art, Gunma, and the Niigata Bandaijima Art Museum. Fur Story, 2018, Leeds Arts University Little Fur Anger, 2018, Gallery Kido Press Hunter Gatherer, 2018, Akita Museum of Modern Art FLIP (Jam Session: The Ishibashi Foundation Collection x Tomoko Konoike), 2020, Artizon Museum Stories Stitched and Sewn, 2021, Centre for Contemporary Arts The Birth of Seeing, 2022, Takamatsu Art Museum
Group exhibitions
Guangzhou Triennale, 2008 Busan Biennale, 2010 Temporal Turn, 2016, Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas Nous, 2016, 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa Japan—Spirits of Nature, 2017, Nordic Watercolor Museum Oku-Noto Triennale, 2017 Echoes from the Past, 2019, Kerava Art Museum Setouchi International Art Festival 2019 Timeless Conversations, 2020, National Art Center, Tokyo Glasgow International 2021 Doraemon Exhibition, 2022, National Museum of Singapore
References