青幻舎 SEIGENSHA Art Publishing

This volume presents the entire scope of a five-part solo exhibition by Atsushi Suwa. “Can’t See Anything Anyway” begins with fragile, easily perishable subjects—flowers, fruit, tofu. “Portraying Loss” centers on Suwa’s portraits of the deceased. “Repose” brings together depictions of Suwa’s own family; “The Silent Voices” features fourteen new still lifes, while “At the Shore” comprises a grouping of paintings, figurative sculptures, and drawings. Also including installation views and “Farewell,” a short story by Kaori Fujino composed as an homage to Suwa’s work, the book reveals the essence of Suwa, whose research-based approach to painting has been lauded both in Japan and internationally.

The Covid-19 pandemic sent Suwa into isolation and introspection inside his studio, which—coupled with the quiet days he spent caring for his elderly mother, far removed from the wars and natural disasters rocking the world outside, until her death in 2024—gradually deprived him, he says, of the desire to depict the human figure. The book is a chronicle of the process by which he overcame his block and returned himself to that work—a record of the still-ongoing inquiry and creativity of an artist whose precise eye and hand have compelled him to rigorously interrogate the acts of seeing and painting.

Painter Atsushi Suwa was born in Hokkaido in 1967 and earned a master’s degree in painting from the Musashino Art University Graduate School of Art and Design. In 1994, he was awarded a residency in Spain through the Overseas Study Program for Artists sponsored by the Japanese Agency for Cultural Affairs. In 1995, he received First Prize in the International Painting Competition organized by the Barceló Foundation in Spain. He has served since 2018 as professor in the Department of Painting, College of Art and Design, Musashino Art University. His major exhibitions include Atsushi Suwa: Can’t See Anything Anyway (2011, Suwa City Museum of Art) and Atsushi Suwa: Fire in the Medial Orbito-Frontal Cortex (2022, Fuchu Art Museum).

Novelist Kaori Fujino was born in Kyoto in 1980. She received the Bungakukai New Writers’ Award in 2006, the Noma Literary Prize for New Writers in 2012, and the Akutagawa Prize in 2013.