Portrait of Rei Zukidou Photo by Jerzy GoliszewskiGalerie Sara Lily Perez presents Fugue of Becoming, a solo exhibition of new and recent works by Berlin-based Japanese painter Rei Zukidou. Running from September 5 to October 17, 2026, the presentation brings together a focused body of paintings and works on paper created throughout 2026, examining the tension between figuration, gestural intuition, and material mark-making.
Across Zukidou’s compositions, individual gestures exist distinctly within vast, open grounds. Organic forms, calligraphic strokes, and diagrammatic traces appear suspended across raw canvas and paper without settling into rigid narrative images. Working with pencil, charcoal, watercolour, oil, and pastel, Zukidou treats the surface with immediate tactility—letting delicate lines, intense clusters of pigment, and quiet intervals create their own dynamic rhythms.
The exhibition title adopts the musical structure of the fugue as a conceptual framework. Rather than centring on a static visual subject, the works operate through themes of recurrence, interval, and displacement. Marks reappear across varying scales and distances, shifting through constant variation. In Zukidou’s practice, the act of “becoming” is not a trajectory toward a final, fixed state, but an ongoing condition where meaning remains fluid, relational, and provisional.
Educated in Fine Art at Tokyo Zokei University with further studies at Central Saint Martins in London, Zukidou’s Berlin practice continually navigates the boundary between the physical and metaphysical, giving tangible form to the invisible forces of thought, memory, and sensation.
Exhibition: Fugue of Becoming at @galerieslp
Artist: Rei Zukidou @rei.zukidou_art
Dates: September 5 – October 17, 2026
Private Preview: September 4, 2026 | 17:00–19:00
Public Opening: September 5, 2026 | 18:00–21:00
Berlin Art Week Special Event (with STUDIO183): September 11, 2026 | 17:00–20:00
Venue: Galerie Sara Lily Perez, BIKINI BERLIN, Budapester Str. 38–50, 10787 Berlin
