Born in Tokyo and currently living in Tokyo.
In 2000, Tomoo Gokita published an art book, Lingerie Wrestling, from Little More Co., Ltd. Gokita's early works, which achieved cult-like popularity, were mainly drawings set down on paper in an improvisational way. They were not only exhibited at galleries and other spaces but many were also published as illustrations and reproductions in artistic magazines. The surrealistic black and white figures he has depicted in recent years using gouache on canvas have attracted prompt attention in New York, and Gokita has also broadened his range of activities both in the art world and in a variety of other fields.

Solo Exhibitions:
"Funland" (2010, Aliceday, Brussels), "HEAVEN" (2009, HONOR FRASER, Los Angeles), Taka Ishii Gallery, Tokyo (2009), "Wildest Dreams" (2010, ATM Gallery, New York), "Lingerie Wrestling" (2000, Shibuya PARCO Gallery / Nagoya PARCO Gallery / Fukuoka Artium), etc.

Group Exhibitions:
"Black and White" (2011, NANZUKA UNDERGROUND, Tokyo), "VOCA 2009 The Vision of Contemporary Art - New Two-dimensional Artists" (2009, Ueno Royal Museum, Tokyo), etc.

Publications:
Art Book, Lingerie Wrestling (2000, Little more), etc.
 

Born in Frösö, Sweden, and currently living in Tokyo.
Anders Edström is a photographer and a filmmaker. Upon moving to Paris in 1990, he began working closely with designer Martin Margiela and spent many years taking photographs for Maison Martin Margiela. He has published his photographs in various magazines in France and abroad, such as the French magazine Purple, and he has also shot campaign photographs for fashion brands. Since 2001, Edström has made several films with C.W. Winter, including a collaboration with guitarist Derek Bailey, One Plus One 2, as well as a narrative feature film, The Anchorage, which won a Golden Leopard Prize at the Locarno International Film Festival 2009. Since 2004, he has lived in Tokyo.

Solo exhibitions:
"Baptême" (2009, Gallery Trax, Yamanashi), etc.

Group exhibitions:
"Not in Fashion" (2010, Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt), "The Second Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions" (2010, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography), "Elysian Fields" (2000, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris), etc.

Film works:
The Anchorage, 2009
One Plus One 2, 2003

Publications:
safari (2010, Nieves), Waiting some birds and bus a woman / Spidernets places a crew (2004, SteidlMACK), etc.
 

Born in Aichi and currently living in Tokyo.
After graduating from Tama Art University, Jun Tsunoda displayed his talent as an art director in the advertising and publishing trade fields beginning in the 1980s and was also highly evaluated as a graphic designer. For many years he had been creating paintings as his lifework, and from around 2000 he began to properly exhibit these works, which attracted considerable public attention. In addition to painting using acrylic paints, he employs a variety of other materials and methods, such as watercolour, collage and silkscreen, and his work is characterized by the use of rich colours and lines filled with musical sensitivity.

Solo exhibitions:
"sounding through" (2010, FOIL GALLERY, Tokyo), "yama-biko" (2010, Gallery Trax, Yamanashi), "nyo i ju" (2010, FOIL GALLERY, Tokyo), "TRANSMISSION" (1998, Starnet, Tochigi)

Publications:
Cave (2009, FOIL) and MEXICO ICONS (joint work with Ichiro Ono, 2000, Aspect Corporation)
 

Born in Santa Monica, California and currently living in New York.
Shingo Francis is a painter who entered the art world as a serious artist in Japan after gaining a Bachelor's Degree of Fine Arts at Pitzer College, Claremont, California. He began his career as a painter by creating a series of works in which he represented a transparent world of deep navy blue monotones in paintings with extremely small component elements. In parallel with his work in oils, Francis also depicts optical phenomena in watercolours on large-sized rolled paper on an experimental basis in an attempt to transpose into his colours various optical phenomena that appear in the atmosphere.

Solo exhibitions:
"Veils: a dialogue with the abyss" (2011, Galerie Paris, Kanagawa), "Bound for Eternity" (2009, Montalvo Arts Center, Saratoga, California), "Blue's Silence: ashes in darkness" (2008, Hino Gallery, Tokyo), "Hoop Art" (2010, Casa Del Mar Hotel, Santa Monica, California), etc.

Group exhibitions:
"Art as Expression of Being" (2011, Checkpoint Ilgen, Berlin), "Ties over Time" (2010, Residence of the U.S. Ambassador to Japan, Tokyo), "Elements of Nature" (2010, Contemporary Art Center New Orleans, New Orleans), etc.
 

Born in Ibaraki and currently living in Ibaraki.
After completing a Postgraduate Course in Art at the University of Tsukuba, Niro Nozawa worked as an art teacher in a high school for many years, and he is now a tutor at Meisei University. His mental strength in confronting oil paint as a material without flinching is linked directly to the attractiveness of his work. His brush strokes, made by moving his entire body and with the full use of a special rubber spatula known as a squeegee, appear to be permeated with his delicate view, which merges seamlessly with natural phenomena.

Solo exhibitions:
"Darkness on the Water Surface" (2011, Gallery Kobayashi, Tokyo), "After the Rain" (2009, Gallery Ciel, Ibaraki), "Three Paintings" (2007, Rokkakudo [Hexagonal Arbor] / The Remains of Tenshin Okakura, Ibaraki), etc.

Group exhibitions:
"Exhibition of the Contemporary Artists in Ibaraki" (2007, The Museum of Modern Art, Ibaraki), "Words of Nature - Forms of Art" (2001, Hitachi City Folk Museum, Ibaraki), "Asian Art Biennale Bangladesh" (1997, Dhaka, received an Honourable Mention Award), "VOCA 1997" (1997, Ueno Royal Museum, Tokyo), "Ibaraki Biannual Dialogos 1996 : Conditions of Contemporaries" (1996, Contemporary Art Center - Art Tower Mito, Ibaraki), etc.
 

Born in Kagoshima and currently living in Chiba.
Yuji Akatsuka completed a Master's Degree Course at the Postgraduate School of Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music (the present Tokyo University of the Arts), where he majored in oil painting and print work. After graduation, he initially attempted to work as a graphic designer and illustrator, and then, gripped with new determination, he decided to become a painter. His series of early works entitled "canary", in which forms like shadows were depicted on large canvases, were awarded high evaluations. In his latest series, "another mountain", Akatsuka is attempting to capture the theoretical development of a painting structure to a higher level than previously.

Solo exhibitions:
Gallery Kobayashi (Tokyo), Kamakura Gallery (Kamakura), Galleria Finarte (Nagoya), Galerie Ando (Tokyo), Gallery Murayama (Tokyo), etc.

Group exhibitions:
"9th Art Program Ome - Between Mountains and Rivers" (2011, Ome Municipal Museum of Art, Tokyo), "The Power of Painting -Japanese Painting Since 1980s" (2003, Museum Of Contemporary Art Tokyo), "In Search of FORM-11 Japanese Artists" (2001, Busan Metropolitan Art Museum, Korea), "Allegory of Seeing 1995 : Painting and Sculpture in Contemporary Japan"(1995, Sezon Museum , Tokyo), "A Perspective on Contemporary Art - Among the Figures" (1992, The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo), etc.

Publications:
kotori (a little bird) (1998, a picture book with a poetry collection written by poet Naoko Nishimoto), etc.
 

Born in Chiba and currently living in Chiba.
While taking a Master's Degree Course at the Graduate School of Musashino Art University, Tamihito Yoshikawa held his first solo exhibition at Kamakura Gallery under the recommendation of Professor Teruo Fujieda, and from that time on he has continued to exhibit his works mainly at this gallery. Yoshikawa's experience in the restoration of paintings has provided him with knowledge of materials science that he has utilized to good effect in his own creative work. It is partly as a result of this applied experience that the delicate mixture of colours developing on the canvas and the tactile elements of the paint layers on the picture surface succeed so well in capturing the viewers' attention. Yoshikawa can be described as an artist who combines a craftsman-like temperament with a delicate sensitivity.

Solo exhibitions:
"Tamihito Yoshikawa Exhibition" (2011, Orient Arts Nagano, Tokyo), "net" (2011, Nihonbashi Takashimaya Art Gallery X, Tokyo), "kind of green" (2009, Kamakura Gallery, Kanagawa), etc.

Group exhibitions:
"China Fifth Art Industry Forum" (2004, National Museum of China, Beijing), "Chiba Art Now 2001 - Domain of Painting" (2001, Sakura City Museum of Art, Chiba), "ART BASEL" (1994, '95, '96, '97, '98, Switzerland), etc.

Publication:
Book of the Shortest Poems in Japan (2003, edited by Eiji Ito, illustrated by Tamihito Yoshikawa, Iwasaki Shoten)