The creative impulse passed down through generations Ushio Shinohara, Noriko Shinohara, Alexander Kukai Shinohara Group Exhibition “Generations” by the Shinohara Family Hold at GOCA by Garde in New York
Ushio Shinohara, Black on White, 2025. Acrylic paint on unstretched canvas, 72 x 96 in.
《Autumn Sunshine》（2025）
GARDE will present the group exhibition “Generations” by the Shinohara family—contemporary artists Ushio Shinohara, Noriko Shinohara, Alexander Kukai Shinohara—at GOCA by Garde, the art gallery operated by GARDE. The exhibition will open on Thursday, January 8, 2026.
GOCA by Garde is GARDE’s first overseas art gallery, showcasing a diverse range of works including
paintings, sculptures, and ceramics, with the aim of introducing Japanese and Asian artists to the world. It seeks to become a new cultural hub for promoting contemporary art from Japan and Asia on a global scale.
The exhibition commemorates the first anniversary of GOCA by Garde’s opening and marks the first collaborative exhibition in New York since 2014 to feature all three members of the Shinohara family together.
From postwar Japanese art to the present day, Ushio Shinohara has pursued an active career spanning Japan and the United States.
Noriko Shinohara has developed her own distinctive mode of expression alongside him, while Alexander Kukai Shinohara explores new forms shaped by urban culture and contemporary sensibilities.
By bringing the works of these three artists together in a single space, the exhibition reveals something that transcends a conventional retrospective or family show: the inheritance and transformation of the creative act itself.
Promotional Video
Credit: Kamran Rosen
A “family” as a form of expression, coexisting around the axis of creative practice.
The Shinohara family has long pursued their artistic practice in environments where life and creation are inseparable—from their artist loft in SoHo to their current home and studio in Brooklyn’s DUMBO. This exhibition raises questions not about bloodlines or generational frameworks themselves, but about how creative environments, physicality, and narratives are shared, inherited, and continually renewed.
Through the intersection of each artist’s distinct personality and perspective, the avant-garde spirit of postwar Japanese art, feminist narratives rooted in personal history, and contemporary expressions shaped by urban culture converge within a single space. This convergence brings to life the layered dimensions of time evoked by the title, Generations.
Highlights of this exhibition
・Ushio Shinohara
One of the leading avant-garde artists of postwar Japanese art, Shinohara was a key member of the Neo-Dadaism Organizers and exerted a decisive influence on Japan’s art scene in the 1960s. From 1969 onward, he has been based in New York, continuing his practice within the postmodern art scene.
This exhibition centers on Shinohara’s new work Black on White (2025), created to commemorate the first anniversary of GOCA as the artist turns 94 during the exhibition period. In addition, the exhibition presents works from his iconic “Boxing Painting” series, along with sculptures.
・Noriko Shinohara
《Aurora — or Fjord — ?》（2025年）
A painter and printmaker known for the Cutie & Bullie series, which reflects his life experiences. In this exhibition, through recent and newly created works, she presents an expressive space where everyday life and memory, personal experience and fiction intersect.
・Alexander Kukai Shinohara
Incorporating urban found materials and sensibilities drawn from street culture, he creates paintings and sculptures that combine figuration with narrative depth. While grounded in an expressive lineage inherited from his parents, his works are imbued with a contemporary sense of speed and energy.
《 Untitle 》（2017年）
Exibition Overview
Title:「Generations」
Date: January 8, 2026 (Thursday) to February 19, 2026 (Thursday)
Address: GOCA by Garde 515 W 23rd St, New York, NY 10011
Admission Fee: Free
Official Site：https://www.goca.gallery/
Artist Profile
Ushio Shinohara
Ushio Shinohara is a Brooklyn-based painter and sculptor and one of the leading avant-garde figures of postwar Japanese art. As a founding member of the Neo-Dadaism Organizers, he made a powerful impact on Japan’s art scene in the 1960s. In 1963, he was among the first Japanese artists to adopt Pop Art techniques, presenting his Imitation Art series. By critically referencing the works of artists such as Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, he developed a distinctive artistic language that bridges Japanese and American art movements.
After relocating to New York in 1969, he developed a series of figurative and highly energetic works, including his iconic cardboard motorcycle sculptures. From the 1960s onward, he pursued his signature Boxing Painting series, in which sponges attached to boxing gloves were soaked in paint and used to strike the canvas. By transforming physicality and the act of creation itself into art, this practice established his international reputation.
He continues to sustain a vigorous creative drive, producing dynamic works that range from public spaces to intimate, private contexts. His works are held in the collections of—and exhibited at—major museums and institutions worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, M+, the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, and the Japan Society in New York.
Noriko Shinohara
Noriko Shinohara is a contemporary painter and printmaker known for her distinctive visual language that weaves together narrative, humor, and her own life experiences. Born in Toyama Prefecture, she moved to New York in 1972 to study art and has continued her artistic practice there ever since.
In her signature Cutie & Bullie series, which she began in 2003, Shinohara employs comic-style imagery and semi-autobiographical characters to candidly and lightly depict her artistic independence, her relationship with her husband Ushio Shinohara, and the conflicts and everyday realities surrounding creative life. This body of work has been highly regarded for elevating personal narratives into a universal perspective.
In her more recent work, Shinohara has developed a more fantastical and poetic worldview, drawing on motifs from her own memories and dreams, as well as scenes from everyday life and animals in her immediate surroundings. She was selected for the New York International Print Competition New Prints in both 2003 and 2005, and in 2007 participated in the exhibition Making a Home: Japanese Contemporary Artists in New York at the Japan Society Gallery. Her works are included in the collection of the Davis Museum and Cultural Center at Wellesley College.
Alexander Kukai Shinohara
Alexander Kukai Shinohara is an artist whose paintings and sculptures are rooted in figuration and narrative, incorporating sensibilities drawn from street culture and the urban environment. Based in Brooklyn, he has developed a distinctive artistic language while sharing a studio in DUMBO with his parents, artists Noriko Shinohara and Ushio Shinohara.
After graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), he began creating sculptural works using found urban materials such as discarded cardboard, electrical wiring, industrial plastics, and newspapers, alongside paintings characterized by neon colors and dynamic, gestural brushwork. Motifs such as skateboards and motorcycles—symbols of speed, consumer culture, and memories of urban life—are distilled into deeply personal narratives throughout his work.
In 2009, he was selected for the exhibition New Tale of Our Age (co-curated by Midori Yoshimoto and Irene Wang) at the Visual Arts Center in Summit, New Jersey, and has since continued to exhibit his work in both the United States and Japan. In 1992, he received the Mark Rothko Award, sponsored by The New York Daily News and the Mark Rothko Foundation.
