At the New Year time of 2016 in Tokyo, I received an emotional call from the student; Mr. Hiroshi MINAMISHIMA passed away, the art world lost an outstanding art critic, curator, and I lost my teacher, my fellow, and an intimate friend. A workshop hosted by Mr. Hiroshi MINAMISHIMA at University of Tsukuba in Tokyo not long before, me and an artist friend from Hiroshima was attending and gave talks, I was never expecting this was my last experience with him.
 

Three years are passing by, I still can’t accept the fact that he is gone, I can dream about him, his behind figure at Ueno Station or Geogo house of Shinjuku. I remember every times we met, they were all rainy days, both of us were rain-force free, we ran in the rain, walked into restaurants and ate, with grin in our faces.  
 

Hiroshi MINAMISHIMA memorial exhibitions series will run for a year, it will begin with the sculpture artist Mika SHIMAUCHI solo exhibition and end with Hiroshi’s brother, Takashi MINAMISHIMA, during this year there will be 3 or 4 more exhibitions hold in Shanghai and Tokyo. We will also have a celebration party at MINAMISHIMA solo exhibition, a release of Hiroshi MINAMISHIMA’s posthumous work, “Last Site” Chinese version. All the artists of the exhibitions were once been reviewed by Hiroshi MINAMISHIMA. Natural, un-affected, liberal, and the new feels, this is Hiroshi MINAMISHIMA.  
 

During the Christmas time of 2013, when Shun Art Gallery was still renting the old space in M50 art district of No. 50 Moganshan Road, Mr. Hiroshi MINAMISHIMA curated a group exhibition “Femme Fatale”, he highly recommended Mika SHIMAUCHI, whom is a sculpture artist based at Kumamoto of Kyushu in Japan. In the comments of Mika, Mr. Hiroshi wrote: The horse seems to be preparing to wake up and run, but it is actually walking silently towards death. Quietly, as though it were beginning to fall into deep sleep. The sculpture, the images of life and death crossed between themselves, the lust and memory of lives dropped from the surface of this overlapping. The actual and essential weight, lead us to the end line of esthetics, comes from the termination and deaths.
 

It was tough job for us to begin with it of the memorial exhibitions. This tremendous project, started from Kyushu, the stories within are the result of the cause, good deeds strewed with setbacks, let the nature takes its causes.  
 

The exhibition will showcase the early stage of Mika SHIMAUCHI’art creations; the series of her pondering of life and death, her small size works and the new creations from this summer when she was doing the residency program at Canal Town Studio. The new works reflect the uncomfortable and resistance generated by the new environment, her private feelings of shocked, sting hurt. Those are the portraits of herself. Regardless of the works sizes, her works possess a special vibe of sensitive, unsettling, astonished and pride. She bestowed her creations with a unique character, versatile but long lasting, un-peaceful but bold. 
 

It may be a coincidence but also an inevitable, Mr. Hiroshi has a twin brother, Mika has a twin sister, this chitchat, were telling the miraculous stuff. 
 

New creation of summer, will meet you at the beginning of fall, in the name of Hiroshi MINAMISHIMA, I curated the solo exhibition of this young artist, “big romance”, the title comes from artist’s idea, using the Japanese words to say is “くそロマンチック”. This phrase are her impression of Hiroshi MINAMISHIMA, a truly expression from the bottom of the heart. 
 

Autumn are walking to us, big romance, in the name of Hiroshi MINAMISHIMA 

Shun written at country village, in the end of 2018’ summer