Yuki Higashino & Elisabeth Kihlström

The exhibition of the Swedish artist Elisabeth Kihlström (1988) and Yuki Higashino (1984) from Japan fits the concept of the G99 Gallery, based on the presentation of young talented artists from both the Czech Republic and abroad. The two artists have met four years ago in Vienna and they have been there and working together since then, occasionally as an artistic duo, at other times creating their works individually, although within a single exhibition project, as now in the case of the exhibition for G99.

Yuki Higashino exhibits new acrylic paintings on Plexiglas. He appropriates photographs of generic contemporary abstract paintings he finds online, separating them into CMYK channels in Photoshop, rasterizing and layering them, which gives depths to the image. He ironizes the present-day mindless epigones of gestic abstract paintings that decorate a number of hallways and offices in institutions and semi-public places.

The phenomenon of mobile phones is the central theme of the works presented by Elisabeth Kihlström in the exhibition. In recent years, mobile phones have almost become a part of their users – they are extensions of our hands and minds, carriers of our private interior space that we often don’t hesitate to open in public through them.

Yuki Higashino (b. 1984) & Elisabeth Kihlström (b. 1988) are a young pair of artists who collaborate and have lived for several years in Vienna. They are representatives of post-conceptual tendencies in the current art debate. Their work charts the story and narrative structure of basic themes, such as: the landscape, artistic practice and art history, which are the bearers of critical, aesthetic and art procedures and serve as a tool for re-evaluating and rediscovering the fundamental aesthetic principle of our reality. They employ a wide scale of procedures from photography, via objects, video and installations. Their rigid and minimalist form convincingly shows contemporary visual vocabulary in connection with an endeavour to redefine formal signs.