There is a lively aura surrounding the characters who populate the paintings of Japanese-French artist Kai Yoda, though it is not an energy that can necessarily be described as uplifting. Often, these figures appear as haunting, ghostly presences, appearing through the alchemy of paint as if summoned from the abyss of hell (or from traumas buried deep in the subconscious). Having disbanded the artistic duo he created with his partner Etah Yoda, Kai Yoda has embarked on a new chapter at his recently closed gallery at the Bremond Capella in Paris, presenting a highly charged symbolic world informed by familial traumas, inherited memories and a series of intense insights he has arrived at on a recent journey of self-discovery. Particularly poignant was his recent stay in Indonesia, which coincided with an exhibition at Rho Projects. There, he reconnected with a more spiritual spirituality, attuning himself to the energies of the landscape and the many species that inhabit it, and that experience found its way into the saturated atmosphere that characterized his later body of work.
Yoda’s latest paintings are the result of an intuitive and spontaneous exercise aimed at reconnecting with something deeper within both spirit and earth: the resilience of natural cycles and the energies of elemental forces. He works primarily with organic pigments, aggregates, incense, oil paint, dyes and beeswax, materials that naturally open up a space between inner and outer projection. Layer upon layer accumulates until symbolic evocations of bodies and spirits emerge almost hypnotically from the material of the paintings themselves, suggesting the potential for endless transformation into new forms.
“I think I’m still kind of realizing myself, in the process. It’s very difficult to verify from a distance,” he candidly told the Observer during the show. While many of the works initially read as lyrical abstractions emerging from the subconscious, they remain deeply rooted in nature. He explains that most of the colors come from scans of plants, which are then manipulated as part of his process. “I worked with artificial intelligence scientists from Spain, but then it became very intuitive. I also follow the nature of matter, to the point where it becomes something more – perhaps spiritual, or certainly intuitive.”
Yoda admitted that the end result is much more chaotic than what the post-human artificial refinement crowd might associate with his previous work. His paintings now emerge from an inherited spiritual sensibility that allows him to see beyond individual and class boundaries, and embrace a broader environment of entanglements.
When Yoda was asked about spirituality and spirituality, he explained that it was only after leaving Japan that he realized that there were completely different views of reality: the more primitive, spiritual view that is in harmony with nature, and the Western view that separates humans from it. “When I was there, it seemed very normal to me, just part of the culture,” he said. “Then I moved to Europe and became aware of Christian customs, and how different that world view was.” “Here, there is a strong dichotomy between living and non-living things, between object and object. When I studied at the RCA in London, the program was very theory-based, and I felt I had to put words and concepts around everything.”
Travel has since become central to his practice. In the past year, he has spent time in different geographies, creating works in response to local plants, animals, dew, weather, food and materials. In one of his recent projects, he collaborated with a chef and fashion designer on a show that incorporates wearable elements, rust, scent, food, and physical presence. In his work, smell, touch, sound and taste become catalysts for associations that are felt before they are understood.
However, although the work becomes geographically global, the questioner surrenders to some sense of interconnectedness underlying it that began for him in Bali. He remembers the geckos and snakes that inhabit the house, the daily offerings of incense and food, and the rituals in which ancestors remain intimately present among the living. “When you live in Indonesia, you have animals inside your house, like the first night there was a gecko right in front of me, almost like a baby, and then there are snakes living around me, so the separation between human, animal and nature becomes blurred.”
He added that even death itself is part of this interconnectedness. “They worship the ancestors. They perform this ritual five times a day, with incense burned and food offered. There’s also an island where they embrace the dead. They dig up the bodies, dig them up, and take pictures together. They have a whole celebration. They smoke cigarettes together. They do it once a year. It’s on this special island near a huge volcano. I thought it was a joke, like Photoshop, but it’s real.”
The son of a Japanese photographer and a Swedish model, he has a family history that provides a constant undercurrent in the works shown at Bremond Capella. His mother appears in one painting, though less as a portrait than as an active apparition: Halle’s presence dissolves into a spectral scream, suggesting the emotional power of Munch’s famous figure. “I could never draw in front of my mother because I grew up always feeling watched,” Yoda admitted. “My parents were very intrusive. There were no boundaries. My mother wouldn’t let me close the door to my room, so I was always trying to create distance. But after Indonesia, I saw a new challenge: drawing it in front of her, facing it as she faces herself.”
In the painting, he embodies not just a form, but an emotional and vital burden. He painted it in the kitchen while people were gathering, eating, watching and commenting. This gesture became a way to return attention to her, repair a certain distance between them, and confront the trauma and emotional containment she had endured since childhood.
Notably, Yoda is one of those artists who, despite his deep connection to the subconscious, is not shy about openly discussing his use of artificial intelligence. Most often, AI serves for him as a tool to expand, explore and develop these intuitive areas. “It’s a very dark side, but I’m also working with artificial intelligence programs to make this dream come true,” he said. “I put up pictures of the paintings I’m working on, often side by side with pictures I take during the day, and then the software combines the two.” Artificial intelligence, for Yoda, is another way to explore the imaginative potential of the subconscious and follow the associative flows it suggests. “It’s like brainstorming. It’s like a conversation, maybe, because before I’m working with someone else. Maybe the AI becomes like someone else. It provides feedback that allows you to move to the next creative step.”
Many of these new works are intermediates between Japanese folding screens and European pieces, reflecting the artist’s position between Asia and Europe, as well as between the cultural inheritance of his parents. “It brings a human presence, but it is also absent,” he explained, referring to one of the clothes included in the exhibition. “I always try to provide a sensory experience that triggers different connections in the mind – things we don’t necessarily see but can feel. I try to include smell, touch and sound as part of the work.”
After years of working primarily with sculpture, Yoda finds in drawing a stronger sense of connection, while allowing the practice to expand into composition, performance, sensory experience and the construction of a more complete symbolic world. Hanging in the space, somewhere between clothing, sculpture and painting, was a leather jacket he designed in collaboration with Marie-Yves Lecavalier. The materials contained therein create a more physical relationship with the works, appealing to touch, smell and physical memory while carrying their own material history. Leather is derived from existing stocks. The dyes are largely handmade from natural materials, beeswax and linseed oil. Some of the panels were reused and repainted. The wood comes from dead trees collected in Vassevier, where the artist has previously exhibited her work.
At the opening of the Raymond a cappella show, there was an almost alchemical demonstration featuring chef Megumi Takeyama, who animated a station filled with fermented rice, sake, grains, salt and syrup. The small morsels, in addition to the olfactory element offered to visitors, become an extension of the exhibition itself. The tastes and smells were intense, sometimes unpleasant or disturbing in their strength, and oscillated between attraction and repulsion in a kind of collective ritual of reconnecting with the senses and the natural cycles of all materials and ingredients. Overall, the exhibition was a hymn to what we all carry within us: that primal spirit that accompanied our first encounter with the world and that still manages to make us curious, voracious, passionate, and alive despite the growing sense of separation and alienation that increasingly confines contemporary existence within abbreviated and often static horizons.
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