Kawamura Mana solo exhibition "Truth is stranger than fiction."
shimokitazawaartsJuly 18 - August 2, 2026
1-7 pm
Closed on Mon, Tue and Wed.
*open on July 20
Shimokitazawa Arts is pleased to present Truth is stranger than fiction., a solo exhibition by Kawamura Mana.
Born in Hyogo Prefecture in 1995, Kawamura studied Japanese linguistics and the narrative techniques of modern Japanese writers such as Natsume Sōseki and Shiga Naoya in the Department of Japanese Language and Literature at Waseda University. After working in the private sector, she pursued painting at the graduate school of Kyoto University of the Arts, where she researched contemporary pictorial expression. She is currently based in Kyoto.
Kawamura has participated in numerous exhibitions and art fairs in Japan and abroad. In 2025, she received the Grand Prize at the Gunma Biennale for Young Artists, and the award-winning work was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art, Gunma, establishing her as one of Japan's most promising emerging painters.
Drawing inspiration from literary works from Japan and around the world, as well as her own writing, Kawamura creates paintings that take both language and the imagery it evokes as their motifs. Although words function as a means of conveying concrete meaning, every reader interprets them differently, generating unique images in the mind. Kawamura gives visual form to this inherent ambiguity by writing words onto the surface, allowing them to bleed and dissolve, and then building layer upon layer of paint over them.
Her paintings seem to oscillate between representation and abstraction, reflecting the very process through which written language transforms from concrete description into abstract mental imagery. While unmistakably contemporary, her works also possess a quiet sense of timelessness. This may stem from her ability to move freely through the literary traditions that have been handed down from ancient times to the present, allowing fragments of different eras to coexist within a single pictorial space.
For this exhibition, titled Truth is stranger than fiction., Kawamura explores ambiguous yet undeniably real moments encountered in everyday life. These small, slightly uncanny incidents are often indistinct from the moment they occur; perhaps for that very reason they return to memory from time to time, subtly changing with each recollection. Kawamura embraces these deeply personal experiences—those that many people have felt yet struggle to articulate—and transforms them into paintings without forcing them into definitive narratives.
It is our hope that this exhibition will resonate with each visitor in a unique way, awakening personal memories and experiences of their own.
Exhibition Statement
We often hear the phrase, "Truth is stranger than fiction." Yet the more we try to describe reality precisely, the more its contours seem to dissolve. Contradictory events and indistinct memories often retain a stronger sense of reality precisely because they resist explanation. Rather than experiences whose causes and meanings can be neatly accounted for, it is the elusive moments—the ones that leave us wondering, "What was that, really?"—that continue to linger in our minds for years.
My paintings draw upon poems and prose that I have written, as well as fragments of Japanese literature. I write words repeatedly onto the canvas and wash them away with water as I paint. In doing so, language ceases to function as a vehicle for meaning and instead remains as traces, gestures, and contours upon the surface. The boundary between reading and seeing begins to blur, and what was once language gradually transforms into another kind of image.
Shimokitazawa is a neighborhood once home to many poets and novelists. They were drawn to its winding streets, its chance encounters, and its peculiar atmosphere, where the boundary between reality and fiction seemed to grow uncertain. In Nekomachi (The Cat Town), Hagiwara Sakutarō describes the uncanny sensation of a familiar town suddenly opening onto another world. Yet the moment such an experience is explained through language, it is absorbed back into what we accept as ordinary reality.
Years ago, I fell asleep on the first train of the morning. When I awoke, I found myself in an unfamiliar seaside town. Even now, I cannot find words for the overwhelming weight of the intensely blue sea that seemed ready to spill over the edge of the train window and engulf me. Before I can transform that experience into words or images, I remain suspended before the experience itself.
My work begins from that hesitation. I am interested in receiving an event simply as it is—without assigning it symbolic value or imposing meaning upon it—and in asking how reality might be encountered before interpretation begins.
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Kawamura Mana
Born in 1995, Hyogo, Japan
Education
2018 B.A. in Japanese Language and Literature, School of Culture, Media and Society, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan
2023 M.F.A. in Fine Arts, Graduate School of Art, Kyoto University of the Arts, Kyoto, Japan
Drawing upon her own poetry and prose, as well as works of modern Japanese literature, Kawamura Mana creates paintings inspired by the landscapes that emerge through language and by the material presence of written words themselves. Her practice explores language not only as a means of perceiving the world but also as a force capable of transforming it. While rooted in text, her paintings seek sensations and impressions that cannot be fully contained by language alone.
Across her canvases, layers of handwritten words gradually bleed, dissolve, and fragment, merging with other pictorial forms. Through this process, Kawamura visualizes the fluidity of language and the continual transformation of meaning. Attentive to both the materiality and mutability of words, she seeks to open new possibilities for narrative through painting.
Selected Solo Exhibition
2026 "Kawamura Mana" KAWATA GALLERY, Kobe, Japan
2025 "Archipelagos of the First Person Collapse into Images" anonymous studio, Nagoya, Japan
2024 "mtk+ vol.18: Mana Kawamura" MtK contemporary art (S Store), Kyoto, Japan
2023 "And So, Day After Day" haku kyoto, Kyoto, Japan
Selected Group Exhibitions
2025
Gunma Biennale for Young Artists 2025, The Museum of Modern Art, Gunma, Japan
"Each in Three", SOM GALLERY, Tokyo, Japan
"COURTYARD ARTIST BOOKSHELF" Courtyard HIROO, Tokyo, Japan
"Intricate Iconology" Kyoto Tsutaya Books, Kyoto, Japan
"Garbage, Pencils, and Art" UNKNOWN HARAJUKU, Tokyo, Japan
"Wave and Frame" Two-person exhibition with Rei Kizumoto, GALLERY ROOM・A, Tokyo, Japan
2024
"Six Characters" Two-person exhibition with Yoko Kida, Alternative Space yuge, Kyoto, Japan
Selected Art Fairs
2025 ARTISTS' FAIR KYOTO 2025, The Meiji Kotokan, Kyoto National Museum, Kyoto, Japan
2023 ARTISTS' FAIR KYOTO 2023, Annex, The Museum of Kyoto, Kyoto, Japan
Awards
2025 Grand Prize, Gunma Biennale for Young Artists 2025
Public Collections
The Museum of Modern Art, Gunma
DMG MORI Co., Ltd.
