Aoyama Shin | Shu Yonezawa: "Characters of Voiceless Voices" (Part 1)
Shu Yonezawa's solo exhibition "Characters of Voiceless Voices" explores perceptual incompleteness and nonlinear time through the concept of animation "ghosts."Summary
This article is a review (Part 1) of Shu Yonezawa's solo exhibition "Characters of Voiceless Voices" at SNOW Contemporary from July 17 to September 5, 2026. All works are new from 2026, with nearly 70% being oil paintings. Yonezawa's practice is consistently concerned with "anima" (soul/life force), particularly focusing on the animation technique of "obake" (ghosts)—in-between frames that are deliberately distorted to animate movement. He fixes these "ghosts," which are normally overlooked, as single images and excessively pushes their bodily disintegration, generating a nonlinear temporal order distinct from the linear narrative of frame rates. In his oil paintings, the drying speed of paint—a medium-specific time—allows layers to interpenetrate, introducing a liquid sense of time. Yonezawa aims to consider "the complexity before the world becomes meaning," and his works resonate with photographic and AI imagery while revealing the dislocation of memory and perceptual incompleteness.
(Source：artscape)