LURF GALLERY is pleased to announce the holding of Soh Souen's solo exhibition "Keep Me Together" on the second floor.

Soh Souen has been active both in Japan and abroad through painting, installation and performance, producing works that examine the uncertainty of life and the shape of existence through the body.
This exhibition focuses on Soh Souen's signature style of pointillism, and introduces a new group of works that deepen and develop pointillism, centering on her representative pointillist series, the "tie."

In the "tie" series, I have used personal ID photographs as a starting point to question the "individual" and "identity" of "I." In this new development, I will deepen my consideration of the "we" that dismantles the boundaries between self and other. I will also express the relationship between bodily autonomy and non-autonomy through "From the series: Holes in the body filled with holes," in which I use pointillism to depict the openings in the body through which others enter.

Viewers will be drawn into a tranquil yet tense space, as they come into contact with the boundaries between the "individual" and the "body," which Soh Souen has consistently explored, and his questions about "life."
The exhibition will run from Thursday, September 11th to Monday, October 13th, 2025 (national holiday).

Exhibition overview

Soh Souen Solo Exhibition "Keep Me Together"

Period｜September 11th (Thursday) - October 13th (Monday/Holiday), 2025
Venue | LURF GALLERY 2F
Time｜11:00 - 19:00
Address: Roob1, 28-13 Sarugakucho, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo 150-0033
Cooperation: HIRO OKAMOTO

Opening Reception
Friday, September 12, 2025 18:00 - 20:00
*No reservation required. Free admission. *The artist will be present on September 11th (Thurs) and 12th (Fri).

LURF GALLERY official website | https://lurfgallery.com/
Inquiries about works: https://lurfgallery.com/pages/contact

*Purchases of artworks will be by application until Friday, September 12th, and will be accepted on a first-come, first-served basis from Saturday, September 13th.

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Statement

We kept forgetting.
That it is constantly being invaded by the outside world.
That I maintain this body by consuming others.
That our body is made up of approximately 60 trillion cells.
A fragmented existence.
I am a home for countless others.
Life itself is so uncertain.
The bottomless sadness of individual awareness.
But still, I will continue to live by naming it "me."

This exhibition will feature a series of dot-shaped paintings that the artist has been working on for over five years. This series, which he first exhibited after graduating from university, is the foundation of his own practice, and even now, as he has expanded his range of expression to include painting, performance, and installation, it continues to explore the nature of "I" and "we."

Just as my cells are constantly breaking down and being reborn at this very moment, the existence we normally call "I" is fluid and fragile. "I" is a state in which a collection of countless others is in a constant state of integration, and in order to hold me together, I continue to seek others.

The viewer steps away from the canvas, and the image of a human figure is generated as the dots are integrated by the viewer's eye. In other words, the attributes of this work, and the fact that we are always reminded of our distance from others. The closer one gets to the image, the more the figure breaks down, and one is confronted with the painting's shameful side.

I hope that these works will subtly reveal the fragility and uncertainty of the self, and the need for others - distances and different beings.

Soh Souen

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On So Souen's "Keep Me Together"

Satomura Mari (Curator, Contemporary Art Museum, Kumamoto)

This exhibition will feature So Souen's "tie," a series of pointillist paintings of people using passport photographs, as he continues to explore the boundaries between you and me.
"Tie" is the starting point for Souen's artistic expression, which has expanded into a variety of media including performance and video installations, and is a series that he continues to enthusiastically develop.

The work greets visitors with its precise, static appearance. However, the multiple faces facing forward are ghostly and vague, making them difficult to grasp. If one approaches, they disintegrate into countless square colored masses, refusing to form an image.

I would like to explore the perspective of "tie" through these two points: ID photograph and pointillism.

"Tie" is based on ID photographs. ID photographs are familiar to us, but if we look back at their history, we find that they spread around the world after World War I when they were affixed to passports. As countries began to establish nation-state systems, passports became a way for them to identify people as citizens and link the state and its people. In the background lies the border that divides inside and outside, which even today protects those who belong inside and looks vigilantly at those outside.

The pointillism that gives the works their ghostly appearance is a technique invented by Neo-Impressionists in the late 19th century, based on visual perception through optics and color science. Dots of paint are arranged without mixing, and when they are mixed by human perception, colors and images emerge. In other words, this technique inevitably involves the intervention of other people's perceptions.
The pointillism in "tie" represents a rebellion against the system represented by ID photographs, which separates me from others and assumes my identification as an individual, and is an expression of my intention to be open to others and to continue to change.

Incidentally, Neo-Impressionist painters who sympathized with anarchists are said to have compared the way pointillist dots line up autonomously and harmoniously with the anarchist worldview of "harmony and balance."

Suddenly, it occurred to me that even if our bodies are torn into inside and outside by national borders, we might be able to slip through the border as ghosts and explore the gap between our bodies.

Souen's words at the beginning resonate.

"We have forgotten... that we sustain our bodies by consuming other people."

I sincerely hope that Souen will continue to encounter others, travel back and forth between "sharing" and "separation," and enrich the boundaries between them.

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Soh Souen, tie' 2508,53.0×45.5cm,
Oil on cotton, on wood panel

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Soh Souen, tie' 2509, 53.0×45.5cm,
Oil on cotton, on wood panel

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Soh Souen, Together, 130.3×162.0cm,
Oil on cotton, on wood panel

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Soh Souen, Together, 162.0×130.3cm,
Oil on cotton, on wood panel

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Soh Souen, from a series depicting holes in the body,
22.0×27.3cm, Oil on cotton canvas

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Soh Souen, Bellybutton, 27.3×22.0cm,
Oil on cotton canvas

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Soh Souen, from a series depicting holes in the body,
72.7×91.0cm, Oil on cotton canvas

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Soh Souen, cannibalism, 162.0 ×130.3cm,
Oil on cotton, on panel

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Soh Souen, ID Photo #2, 162.0 ×130.3cm,
Oil on cotton, on panel

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Soh Souen, from a series depicting holes in the body,
45.5×38.0cm, Oil on cotton canvas

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