“MESSENGERS”
by Yuzuru Akimoto & You Jung Byun

March 17 – April 16, 2017

AG Gallery proudly presents Messengers, a two person exhibition by two brilliant artists: Yuzuru Akimoto and You Jung Byun. Please mark your calendar and save the date to visit AG Gallery’s new exhibition opening, and enjoy the tasteful storytelling evening with artworks and our artists. The title of this exhibition the title “Messengers” suggests two artists who create artworks with stories, and there are also other messengers, that are the characters which appear in their works.

Yuzuru Akimoto is a Japanese painter and a graphic designer based in Chiba, Japan. He was born in 1977 in Guam, and when he turned three years old, he moved with his parents back to his family’s home, to a suburb in Japan. He spent his youth away from the busyness of urban cities. When he was 19 years old, he moved to Tokyo. He was making Computer Graphics which was a sensational innovation at the time. Later when he was around 24 years old, he started to question the computer technology and graphic design industry he had been working for, that had been continuing to improve but seemed to not know a moment of rest, and thus he decided to go to Setsu Mode Art School to seek a different kind of art from computer graphic.

“When I paint, I try to be fully ready before standing in front of a canvas. I take notes of memories, smells, words, and feelings. I imagine those collected materials as a picture. Each picture has a reason or an event for why it was painted. My painting is a condensed image to keep the memory of the event. One of my goals for making such paintings is to paint a memory or an event as beautiful as or even more than the actual event itself. It is my practice to find beauty in anything that happens around me. Even a mysterious or ugly unpleasant event has its unique beauty if we try to find it. In order to discover that in my paintings I try to make them without too much narrative expression.” -Yuzuru Akimoto

You Jung Byun is a Korean artist, award-winning illustrator and author, You Jung Byun was born in Queens, New York. Byun grew up in America, Korea and Japan, and after getting her BFA from Hongik University in Korea she returned to New York. She received her Master’s degree of Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts in New York. Her work is recognized for the detailed lines and soft nostalgic colors, imaginative landscapes (such as background images and patterns), and characters and portraits. Today, she lives and works in Brooklyn, New York; enjoying many chocolate nger biscuits and tea, and watching pigeons ghting over stale bagels. Her work has been recognized by various magazines, awards and competitions, including The New York Times, Nobrow, Pick Me Up London 2013, Communication Arts Magazine, Creative Quarterly, Ai-Ap, Society of Illustrators, Society of Illustration LA, & SCBWI (with winning both Grand Prize in Portfolio Award, and Tomie DePaola Award at a same time on 2010).

“I am interested in the mystery around us — like truth, lost memories, lost feelings, or secrets. When I draw I feel like I am reaching out to the air and try to grab the edge of something I miss. I think it’s based on my experience of moving around a lot as a child and have felt the ideal world is always behind me.”-You Jung Byun