Loyal is pleased to present the solo exhibition Fuzzy Love by Japanese artist Misaki Kawai.

For this exhibition Kawai further explores her distinctive painting-collage style in a new group of large canvases. Kawai composes simple, allegorical scenes, relating the often convoluted subtleties of human interactions. Intentionally naive and humorous, Kawai paints people as fluorescent action-figures and cute, colorful animals doing everyday things together. Her intuitive compositions reveal Kawai’s complexity as she recognizes and interprets universal innuendoes, conveying plenty of feeling in the simple tableaus.

Kawai is perhaps most known for her fantastical installations of utopian worlds, created in meticulous detail out of soft fabric, papier-mâché, wood, numerous ”lo-fi” materials and electric light. For this exhibition Loyal presents Misaki Kawai’s sculpture, ”Octopus Restaurant” whose blinking sign beckons to a big red octopus in a top hat who sits as a happy guard atop a fun-food kiosk on a winding mountain road. Furry doll-like characters enjoy themselves and whizz by in cars and motorbikes, sometimes with fuzzy friends by their side.

Kawai has been exhibited widely internationally with solo museum exhibitions at: ICA Boston (Institute of Contemporary Art), Watarium Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo, P.S. 1 MOMA Contemporary Art Center in New York and The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Born in Kagawa, Japan, in 1978, and raised in Osaka, Misaki Kawai studied at the Kyoto College of Art and moved to New York in 2000. She quickly appeared in group exhibitions curated by influential independent curator Rich Jacobs (as well as an early issue of the gallery’s own Loyal Magazine). Early solo exhibitions include ”Air Show” her ”tour-de-force debut” at Kenny Schacter ConTEMporary, New York, as well as New Image Art, L.A. and Jack Hanley, San Francisco. Worldwide solo and group exhibitions include Deitch Projects, New York, Moore Space, Miami and most recently Clementine Gallery, New York and Perugi Arte Contemporanea, Padova, Italy.