A Contented Skull, 2003
Digital chromogenic print and diasec mounting
135 x 295 cm
Edition of 6

artist profile

Chiho Aoshima

born

1974

lives and works

Tokyo, Japan

education

BA, Department of Economics, Hosei University, Tokyo, Japan, 1995

about the artist

One of the earliest members of Takashi Murakami’s Kaikai Kiki artist collective, Chiho Aoshima exemplifies his Superflat aesthetic in her digitally rendered panoramas. Brilliantly saturated with overlapping color gradients, her imagery tells of a postapocalyptic Japan where skulls and schoolgirls, ghosts and geishas abound in cityscapes that melt into landscapes. Aoshima’s work testifies to an age of the contemporary where technology meets drawing—computer-generated Bezier curves are deployed to depict a human idea—in the flawless composition of a picture. Early in her career, she was invited to a residency at Art Pace in San Antonio, USA.  Aoshima has participated in numerous group exhibitions within and outside of Japan, held at prestigious venues such as the Musée d’Art Contemporain in Lyon, France; the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, United Kingdom; and Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona, Spain. Her art’s potential for scale has won the artist many commissions over the years: she has completed expansive mural installations at the 14th Street Union Square subway station in New York, the Gloucester Road underground station in London, and the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, as well as the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston.

  • Selected exhibition history
  • Permanent collections
  • Projects
  • Editions
  • Publications
  • Recent news

2011SOLO Chiho Aoshima: City Glow, Museum of the Moving Image, New York, USA

GROUP Roundabout, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel

2010GROUP Disquieted, Portland Art Museum, USA

GROUP Roundabout, City Gallery Wellington, New Zealand

2009GROUP Sacred Monsters: Everyday Animism in Contemporary Japanese Art, Tisch Gallery, Boston, USA

GROUP Pretty is as Pretty Does, SITE Santa Fe, New Mexico; Haggerty Museum, Milwaukee, USA

GROUP MOCA´s First Thirty Years, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, USA

2008GROUP Psychedelic: Optical and Visionary Art since the 1960's, San Antonio Museum of Art, USA

GROUP KRAZY! The Delirious World of Anime + Comics + Video Games + Art, Vancouver Art Gallery, Canada

GROUP The Cinema Effect: Illusion, Reality, and the Moving Image Part One: Dreams, Smithsonian Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C., USA

SOLO Chiho Aoshima: Terror and Seduction, Joan Miro Foundation, Barcelona, Spain

2007GROUP Making Worlds, Auckland Art Gallery, New Zealand

GROUP MCA Exposed: Defining Moments in Photography, 1967-2007, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, USA

GROUP Like Color in Pictures, Aspen Art Museum, USA

SOLO Chiho Aoshima, Lyon Contemporary Art Museum, France

SOLO Chiho Aoshima: City Glow, Platform for Art, Gloucester Road Tube Station, London, UK

SOLO Chiho Aoshima: City Glow, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, USA

SOLO Chiho Aoshima, Baltic Center for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, UK

2006GROUP Super Vision, The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, USA

GROUP Spank The Monkey, Baltic Center for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, UK

2005GROUP Ecstasy: In & About Altered States, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, USA

GROUP Rising Sun, Melting Moon, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel

SOLO CHIHO AOSHIMA: City Glow and Paradise, Installation at Union Square Subway Station, New York Public Art Fund, New York, USA

GROUP Little Boy: The Arts of Japan's Exploding Subculture, Japan Society, New York, USA

2004GROUP 54th Carnegie International 2004-05, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, USA

GROUP Fiction. Love: Ultra New Vision in Contemporary Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei, Taiwan

2003SOLO Chiho Aoshima: Matrix 205, U.C. Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, USA

2002GROUP Liverpool Biennial 2002, Tate Liverpool, UK

2001GROUP Superflat, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, USA

GROUP Hiropon Show, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Japan

Ackland Art Museum, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA

Cafesjian Center for the Arts, Yerevan, Armenia

Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, USA

Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, USA

Seattle Art Museum, USA