Kenichi Hoshine
And There Came a Storm Beneath a Cutthroat Moon
New York | Tribeca
May 16 – June 14, 2025
Even though Kenichi Hoshine’s artworks evoke a sense of the uncanny, blending barely recognizable figures or body parts with abstract shapes in direct, attention-demanding arrangements, they also immediately wash over the viewer with a feeling of nostalgic calm. This effect is due in no small part to his color palette: a blend of vintage-toned yellows, reds, and blues. These warm, muted hues offer the viewer a visual anchor and invite them to immerse themselves in his enigmatic works. Much like the use of color in traditional ukiyo-e woodblock prints, Hoshine’s palette guides the viewer’s eye across the composition, creating depth, contrast, and atmosphere.
Hoshine’s distinctive use of color is deeply rooted in childhood nostalgia. Although he only lived in Japan until he was three years old, manga and anime were central to his visual upbringing. After moving to the United States at age three, this foundation expanded to include the vibrant worlds of American comics and cartoons—Marvel, DC, and Disney—which further shaped his aesthetic sensibility. Together, these cultural influences formed a hybrid memory of color and markmaking that continues to echo throughout his work. As a child, Hoshine dreamed of becoming a comic book artist, but over time, he gradually moved away from direct figuration, opting instead to suggest recognizable forms through abstract gestures and tonal nuance.
The warmth of his palette, paired with shapes reminiscent of cut-outs and the rounded, fluid forms seen in the work of Walt Disney, Tex Avery and Max Fleischer, brings a surprising serenity to Hoshine’s surreal tableaus—calm at the center of visual complexity. Despite the density of imagery, his paintings never feel overwhelming. Hoshine acknowledges that his compositions have become increasingly layered and intricate over time, though he doesn’t attribute this shift to any specific reason. Each painting is approached as a standalone piece—created, completed, and rarely revisited. For the viewer, this exhibition offers a journey through the past months, even years, of Hoshine’s artistic evolution. Any inconsistencies between works in And There Came a Storm Beneath a Cutthroat Moon are, for him, part of a natural progression.
Hoshine works by instinct. Although he rarely returns to completed pieces, the path to finishing a work involves significant reworking, editing, and transformation. He avoids sketches, underpaintings, or predetermined plans. Instead, his process is driven by spontaneity and intuition—embracing what he calls “happy accidents.” As he puts it, “The best passages in my paintings, I couldn’t recreate them the same way even if I tried.”
The most recent works in And There Came a Storm Beneath a Cutthroat Moon show an artist increasingly in command of his practice. The deep blues and blacks in pieces like Cinder in the Moonlight and Vibrolux emit a surprising inner light, almost photographic in glow. According to Hoshine, these paintings represent who he is now. They are wild, surprising compositions that invite the viewer to invent their own meanings from the endless narrative possibilities. The result is an enigmatic, fragmented, colorful and surreal take on vintage anime’s dynamic, visually charged storytelling.
Kenichi Hoshine (b. 1977 in Tokyo, JP, lives and works in Brooklyn, NY, US) received a MFA from New York’s School of Visual Arts in 1990. He has had recent solo exhibitions with Hollis Taggart, NY, US; Pt.2 Gallery, Oakland, CA, US and R. Wells Gallery, Binghamton, NY, US. His recent group exhibitions have been with Pt. 2 Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, US; Galleri Kant, Copenhagen, DK; Harpy Gallery, Rutherford, NY, US; Galerie Guido Romero Pierini/Lei Dinety, Paris, FR and Unit London, London, UK. His work belongs to multiple collections, including Colección SOLO in Madrid and the Fidelity Investments Corporate Art Collection in Boston.