Shiori Horie, Counting Myself II

Dates |  Saturday, 12 September – Saturday, 10 October 2026

Opening Reception |  Saturday, 12 September, 5:00 – 7:00 pm

Venue  | √K Contemporary

Organiser  | √K Contemporary

√K Contemporary is pleased to present Counting Myself II, a solo exhibition by Shiori Horie, on view from Saturday, 12 September through Saturday, 10 October 2026. This is the artist’s first exhibition at the gallery in approximately three years.

Following Counting Myself, her solo presentation held earlier this year at Dai-ichi Life Gallery (Yurakucho, Tokyo) in January 2026, this exhibition brings together the celebrated series Partial Future alongside new works, early animal paintings, and the Scabs,  a drawing series created during the COVID-19 pandemic. Tracing a path from her earliest work to the present, the exhibition offers a rare opportunity to encounter the quiet strength and tenderness that runs throughout Horie’s practice. An opening reception will be held on Saturday, 12 September from 5:00 to 7:00 pm.

Right after graduating from Tama Art University with a specialization in Nihonga (Japanese painting) in 2014, Horie held her debut solo exhibition and quickly gained recognition as a rising figure in contemporary Japanese painting. Her early works feature animals rendered with bold compositions and delicate surface texture, their gaze unflinching and direct. Among these, Statuesque (凛然), depicting a shoebill, became the cover illustration for The Emissary by Yoko Tawada (Kodansha, 2014), bringing Horie’s work to a wider audience. In 2016, upon receiving the Gotoh Memorial Cultural Award, she spent a year in Paris, where encounters with people of diverse cultural backgrounds deepened her interest in the human figure. From that point on, portraiture became central to her practice. These figure paintings have won wide acclaim. Her signature series Partial Future (後ろ手の未来) received the VOCA 2022 Honorable Mention Award and has since been shown at the Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura & Hayama, the Okawa Museum of Art and Setagaya Art Museum. This year, at her solo exhibition at Dai-ichi Life Gallery, new works were added to the series, making it a sequence through which viewers can trace the arc of Horie’s development in recent years.

Counting Myself II presents recent figure paintings, early animal works, and still lifes of the objects and plants that have long accompanied someone, offering an opportunity to encounter Horie’s gaze and inner world, and to witness how both have changed over time.

▶　Artist Statement

Counting Myself

So many versions of myself,

all facing brutal efforts of erasure.

That’s why I’m counting myself.

And counting yourself too.

I simply refuse to let go of myself,

in all of its abundance.

Shiori Horie