Yuka Kashihara was born in 1980 in Hiroshima Prefecture. In 2006 she graduated from the Japanese Painting Department of Musashino Art University. In the same year she moved to Germany, and in 2013 she acquired a Diploma from the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig. In 2015, she was named a Meisterschüler (Masters graduate) of the same academy, studying under Professor Annette Schröter. In 2008 she exhibited at the Bauhuas Dessau Foundation in Shakkei (“borrowed scenery”), a solo show curated by research scholar Torsten Blume of the same Foundation, and in 2012 she exhibited in VOCA, Tokyo, where she received both the Honourable Mention Award and the Ohara Museum of Art Award.

In Kashihara’s works, layers of dense yet translucent colors such as blue, pink, green, and brown are applied in bold touches to vividly convey the fundamental energies of the earth. What come to manifest are faraway worlds beyond time and space, where the imaginary and reality coalesce.
Kashihara interweaves the impressions gained from her visits to virgin forests in Japan and abroad, her experiences in Germany where she had lived for a long time, and inspiration from various landscapes with her own memories, thereby depicting imagined landscapes of forests, lakes, mountains, caves, and geological formations that seem to belong to no specific place nor time. Among them, lakes in particular are an important motif for the artist. Taking inspiration from a phrase in Noriko Ibaragi’s poem, “Every human being should have place for a calm and silent lake within the depths of their heart,” the artist expresses her desire to harbor a lake within herself, and continue envisioning her ideal lake.
What appears to be depicted within her works are serene worlds devoid of all human and animal presence. However, deep within the earth lies magma, thus evoking a world seemingly connected to the universe, and offering viewers with the peculiar sensation of glimpsing into another dimension. Multiple perspectives coexist within Kashihara’s works, including her own perspective and ones that may be observed by others, as well as a bird’s-eye views from inside and outside. Furthermore, through a repeated process of trial and error, her paintings at times transform completely from one day to next, as new images are added on top of another. This incorporation of multiple perspectives within a single painting, coupled with changes within the picture plane and the overlap of time, serve to infuse her work with a unique sense of strength and quiet chaos.