Shuji Chiaki is a Japanese female attist, born in Kyoto in 1973. She is thirty-seven years old, and has had a very active career, with almost 30 solo exhibitions to her name. She majored in printing in both college and graduate school, and is well known as a Printmaker, and also started to enlarge her career as a painter. She has gained widespread recognition and won many special international awards.
Even so, in Korea, she has had only a few opportunities to demonstrate her work, through events such as the 12th Space International Print Biennial (2002) and the Seoul International Print, Photo & Edition Works Art Fair (SIPA, 2005). Her upcoming exhibition at Jean Art Gallery will be the largest detailed exhibition of her work in Korea.
Atelier in Kyoto

Shuji Chiaki's work is marked by her use of an extensive variety of lines in splendid"colors. Her work can be largely divided into watercolor and print. It is divided by medium, rather than by content or theme. In other words, the same theme can be expressed through either watercolor painting or print. Thus far, she has focused more on prints.

Shuji Chiaki's works exude a gorgeous and delicate ambience. Her work brings out Japanese sensibilities about color in a natural way. She often paints by using a blotting effect on her colors. Colors and lines are entwined to follow the liberated flow of her mind, embroidering the canvas beautifully in a fashion reminiscent of the automatism of the Surrealists. Her main topics include flowers, the universe, sparkling lights and the sky. Looking at her paintings, a viewer feels like they are witnessing the flow of the artist's consciousness. One flower petal instills life in another, then another, until finally a beautiful flower opens in full bloom. The flower is not a real flower, but the depiction of an image that resembles a flower. Flowers in Shuji Chiaki's work are 'mental image' flowers that have undergone a repeated process of dismantling, reassembling, and dividing in the artist's mind.

In Shuji Chiaki's work, the most prominent element is the line. Her work stands at a point of maximum aesthetic effect that is created by combining free line drawing and splendid colors. She exquisitely blends cool and warm colors of a high purity. In terms of managing colors, her paintings are close to. abstract, but through the addition of line drawings, meanings and symbols are added. Thin, sharp, and dotted lines organize various shapes, such as a hand, a flower, an ovary, a stem, and lace, yet are not so specific and remain somewhat ambivalent and reminiscent of an additional object. An object might look like a womb that conceives life, but at the next moment, it might look like the innermost part of a flower. In the end, it is hard to pinpoint the object with accuracy, and a new form is generated.

Shuji Chiaki explores objects ranging in size and distance, from a flower to the universe. Her lines 'trap' colors, following associations that are as free as a seed drifting in the wind. It seems as if, were the lines lifted from the canvas, clear water would pour out. The essence of her art is the pursuit of the transparent world of sensuality, tinged with an erotic air.

Yoon, Jin-Seop (Art Critic, Professor, Honam University)
March, 2009