STANDING PINE

STANDING PINE is pleased to present Dear Summer, a group exhibition featuring works by Youki Hirakawa, intext, and Masayuki Arai. Opening on Saturday, 4 July 2026, the exhibition offers new perspectives on the systems, structures, memories, and modes of vision that we accept in our everyday lives without conscious awareness.

Youki Hirakawa creates works that read the information held by everyday objects, delving into the histories and political dimensions that emerge from them. In the work For Those Sleepless Nights, bed sheets used at home by the participating artists and gallery staff are gathered and displayed like flags. At a time when the resurgence of fascism and imperialism is a growing concern, the work is raised as a gesture to protect sleep, which may be regarded as one of the last sanctuaries of the people. It quietly suggests a place where the private sphere and social conditions intersect.

The art unit, intext, formed by graphic designers Yusuke Mimasu and Hiroshi Toyama, and programmer Takehisa Mashimo, presents B1 (2026), a new work focusing on the B1 size, 1030 × 728 mm, the de facto standard format for posters. Japan’s B-series paper sizes are a distinctive standard derived from the dimensions of Mino-washi paper, which became widely used in the early Edo period. Taking this history as its point of departure, the work deliberately applies the “B1” standard to various everyday things. By reconsidering the standards and constraints involved in poster production, intext shifts the assumptions of rationality and use, bringing into view the relationship between culture and systems that lies within the standard itself.

Masayuki Arai creates paintings that begin with photographs collected from the internet, extending the image beyond the frame. He paints while imagining what lies outside the photograph affixed to the canvas, and eventually removes the photograph itself, leaving on the surface a rectangular trace and the painted area generated through imagination. Paint applied with a syringe accumulates in multiple layers, moving between image and matter depending on the viewer’s distance. Through the process by which a photograph is transformed into painting, Arai’s work reconsiders the boundaries between reality and imagination, and between the visible and the invisible.

Through these three practices, the exhibition subtly shifts the functions and meanings of familiar things, allowing the social dimensions and uncertainties that lie behind them to emerge. By reconsidering the elements that constitute everyday life from different angles, Dear Summer invites viewers to reflect on the relationships between body, society, memory, and vision.

Dates: Saturday, 4 July – Saturday, 25 July 2026
Hours: 12:00–18:00, Tuesday to Saturday
Closed on Sundays, Mondays, and national holidays
Opening Reception: Saturday, 4 July, 17:00–19:00  (artists in attendance)

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CV

Youki Hirakawa
Born in Nagoya in 1983, Hirakawa moved to Germany in his late twenties to pursue his artistic practice, returning to Japan in 2016 after being caught up in an attempted terrorist attack in Berlin. He is currently based in Gifu Prefecture. In recent years, he has presented many works that address the political dimensions hidden within everyday objects. His major presentations include invited screenings at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Germany, as well as presentations at ArtScience Museum, Singapore; Tikotin Museum of Japanese Art, Israel; Sheffield Museum, UK; Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Russia; Vyatka Art Museum, Russia; National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taiwan; National Archives of Singapore; Salisbury Cathedral, UK; Durham Cathedral, UK; Pola Museum of Art, Japan; Okazaki Mindscape Museum, Japan; and The National Art Center, Tokyo.

For Those Sleepless Nights
(眠れない夜のために)

intext
Formed by graphic designers Yusuke Mimasu and Hiroshi Toyama, and programmer Takehisa Mashimo, intext is an art unit that concentrates on the “application of design.” Their practice reconsiders forms of information transmission and is concerned with the generation of universal messages related to language and culture. Rather than focusing on the content of information itself, they attend to the structures and experiences of text, moving image, and sound that support it, developing a practice that moves between art and design. Their works have been presented in projects at The National Museum of Art, Osaka, as well as at the Japan Media Arts Festival, Kyoto, and Art Basel Hong Kong. In 2024, they participated in Decoding Wonders, an exhibition curated by Kodama Kanazawa in Kyoto.

Masayuki Arai
Born in the United States in 1984 and raised in Osaka, Arai completed his MFA in Oil Painting and Printmaking at the Graduate School of Fine Arts, Aichi University of the Arts, in 2011. He is currently based in Ibaraki Prefecture. Working from photographs collected from the internet, Arai creates paintings by extending the image beyond the frame. The accumulated layers of paint, applied with a syringe, hold the surface between paint and image. Major solo exhibitions include Visible／Vanishing／Drawn／Unpainting at Tokyo International Gallery, Tokyo, 2025; LIKE PAINTINGS at Primo Marella Gallery, Milan, 2025; and Imaginary Accumulation at Mitsukoshi Contemporary, Tokyo, 2024. He has also participated in VOCA 2014 at The Ueno Royal Museum, Tokyo, 2014, and Aichi Triennale 2013, Nayabashi Area: Toyo Warehouse, Aichi, 2013.

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