Line II

2026 | acrylic on canvas | 900 × 1800 mm | © Hogalee, courtesy KANA KAWANISHI GALLERY

KANA KAWANISHI GALLERY is pleased to present Hogalee’s solo exhibition, “Liminal,” beginning Saturday, August 8, 2026.

Hogalee is an artist who continues to create works featuring the motif of a “girl”—symbolized through manga-style line art—as a mirror reflecting the contemporary world. In addition to canvas works layered with the context of contemporary art, he creates murals using acrylic paint and masking tape, treating the tape itself as a support that transcends the boundaries of a traditional painting frame. By consistently repeating a single motif while freely crossing genres and media, he has established a truly unique artistic presence.

This exhibition, his second solo show at KANA KAWANISHI GALLERY in four years, is titled “Liminal.” The term “liminal” originally refers to a “threshold” or “boundary” and denotes the ambiguous boundaries in space, time, and psychological states—such as “being both here and there” or “being neither yet nor already.” In architecture, it refers to spaces “between staying and moving”—such as doors, hallways, staircases, and lobbies—designed for people to pass through. In recent internet culture, it has been consumed and shared as “liminal spaces,” exemplified by “The Backrooms” and “The Exit 8,” where it is unclear whether people are present and where nostalgia and eeriness coexist. There lies a multi-layered fluctuation of sensations—where reality and fiction, security and anxiety, the sacred and the profane overlap—as if “presence emerges from absence.”

Hogalee has superimposed this liminal sensibility onto the symbolic female figure of “girl,” which epitomizes contemporary visual culture. In his canvas works, the simultaneous emergence of flat, symbolic manga-style line art and physical layers built with acrylic paint and masking tape allows him to traverse the boundaries between plane and space, canvas and wall, and object and image. Furthermore, in murals and public projects where the artwork extends beyond the gallery, by bringing “girl” to life at the boundary between “the street” and “the artwork,” and between “the everyday” and “the extraordinary,” he has subtly yet decisively shifted the viewer’s everyday perspective into “another mode.”

​The new work Line II, which occupies a central position in this exhibition, was conceived as an homage to Andreas Gursky’s masterpiece Rhein II. Rhein II, a photographic work that drastically simplified the image into several band-like layers through horizontal stretching, revealed that this very simplicity was a form of fiction (digital editing) designed to most accurately depict a “contemporary river landscape.” By intentionally removing elements such as a figure walking a dog or factory buildings, Gursky creates a paradoxical image of “the most realistic landscape that should not actually exist in that place.” Hogalee’s Line II, while embracing that composition and concept, superimposes the silhouetted outline of a “girl” onto the abstracted horizontal layers, thereby depicting a new liminal space where an “anonymous landscape” and a “characteristic body” coexist.

In Hogalee’s solo exhibition “Liminal,” we also encounter a “girl” who has been reconstructed by fluidly moving between multiple contexts—such as “liminal” as a rite of passage, “liminal space” as an internet meme, and “liminal zone” as an urban interstice. The work evokes an ambiguity reminiscent of a quantum state of “both/neither” and a sense of unease bordering on the uncanny valley. We cordially invite all to this exhibition, which gracefully embraces this duality while quietly reflecting our own “existence as a boundary” as we navigate the contemporary world.

Artist Statement

“Liminal” refers to a psychological or temporal boundary—such as the “interstice, border, or threshold” of a place or state—that is ambiguous and indefinite. In architectural terms, it refers to “doors, hallways, staircases, and lobbies,” while in anthropology, it refers to “rites of passage.”
In recent years, with the popularity of “liminal space*” as an internet meme, concepts such as “a place that feels unsettling because it’s devoid of human presence, or conversely, unsettling because it is inhabited; a sense of eeriness within nostalgia, or a place that is both comfortable and unsettling.” These can be understood through a variety of concepts: phenomena akin to “quantum superposition” that are both one thing and the other yet neither; a boundary where one feels a sense of dissonance toward artificial human likenesses in the “Uncanny Valley”; or “presence within absence.”​

This series of works interprets the concept of “Liminal” in various ways, overlaying and reconstructing images of a girl.

Hogalee

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*liminal space: Specifically, this includes “The Backrooms,” which has evolved into an SCP-like urban legend; the famous game “Exit 8”; and, looking back beyond current trends, “Kisaragi-Eki (Kisaragi Station)” and “P.T. (Playable Teaser).” I feel that the emotional unsettling these works evoke resonates with Japanese horror.

Artist Profile

Hogalee

​Hogalee received his B.F.A. at Tokyo University of the Arts, Department of Design in 1999, and his M.F.A. at Tokyo University of the Arts, Graduate School of Fine Arts, Department of Design in 2001.
Hogalee has been drawing the motif of “girl,” symbolized by line drawings of cartoon depictions as a mirror of the contemporary world. By maintaining an attitude of repeatedly painting a single motif, Hogalee has achieved his unique and distinctive presence in the scene. In addition to canvas works layered in the context of contemporary art, he also creates murals using acrylic paint and masking tape as a medium that transcends the framework of tableaus, overextending genres and media in an unlimited manner.

His recent solo exhibitions include “Dub” (2025, Ginza Tsutaya Books Art Wall, Tokyo), “Entanglement” (2022, KANA KAWANISHI GALLERY, Tokyo), “Masking / Fixing” (2019, Gallery OUT of PLACE TOKIO,  Tokyo), “Sprout! Vol. 4” (2018, OIZUMI KOJO NISHIAZABU, Tokyo), “Snapshot” (2017, Gallery HIROUMI, Tokyo), and “Carpe diem” (2017, Gallery OUT of PLACE TOKIO, Tokyo).
Group exhibitions include “Group Show Contemporary Artists 2026 ‘Interdisciplinary region between 0 and 1’” (2026, Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum), “WHAT CAFE EXHIBITION vol.38 ‘Gigs and Hobbies: The Everyday in Art Practice’” (2024, WHAT CAFE, Tokyo), “Caravan 2024” (2024, Sansiao Gallery, Tokyo), “Sono Aida #Nihombashi 01_OPEN STUDIO” (2024, Nihombashi Muromachi 162 Building, Tokyo), “Itsumono Sono Aida” (2023, Shin Yurakucho Building, Tokyo), “Sono Aida #Shinyurakucho wo meguru” (2022, Courtyard Hiroo, Tokyo), “Nijigen-ha” (2022, Daikanyama Hillside Forum, Tokyo), “Sono Aida #Shinyurakucho ARTISTS STUDIO #04” (2022, Sono Aida, Tokyo), “Tokyo Biennale 2020/2021” (2021, OTEMACHI 1st SQUARE, Tokyo), and “ART BUSAN 2021” (2021, Busan, South Korea).

His commissioned works include Chiral for  “Tokyo Monorail: TOKYO ART & CULTURE” (2025-26, Tokyo Monorail Haneda Airport Line), ReDEVi for “Landmark Art Girl” (2025, Former Sendai Kogyo Building Site, Tokyo),  Re-sortir for “Tokyo Dome City Art Project” (2024, Tokyo Dome City, Tokyo), and Entanglement – Shinjuku III (2022, MetLife Shinjuku Square, Tokyo).

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