Throughout her practice, Furukawa has been deeply influenced by literature, actively incorporating literary ways of thinking and methods into her approach to painting. One of her characteristic methods involves generating titles through the cutting and reconstruction of existing texts. She takes words from texts without an inherent narrative—such as English vocabulary books, instruction manuals, textbooks, and diaries—and separates them word by word, then reconnects them through chance and her own sense of humor to create the title of a work. She subsequently develops a painting from the images and associations that emerge from these words. Through this process, Furukawa considers how the act of naming can shape the way we perceive the world, while also creating new worlds of meaning.
This process reverses the conventional relationship in which a title is given to a painting after the work has been completed. Instead, language becomes the starting point from which the image emerges, establishing a new relationship between word and image. A title does not simply explain or describe the work; it functions as an entity equal to the image itself. The gaps, disjunctions, and moments of incongruity between the two give rise to new meanings and narratives. For Furukawa, this method also serves as a device for moving beyond the limits of her own imagination and experience, allowing her to arrive at images she might never have conceived otherwise.
At the same time, Furukawa’s interest in language extends beyond painting. Working across installation, video, artist’s books, quilt works, and other media, she continues to investigate fundamental questions surrounding what words are and what it means to name something. In her Language Quilt series, for example, fabrics of different colors and forms are arranged according to geometric systems, from which letters and words emerge. Language is treated not simply as a means of conveying meaning, but as a visual and material structure. Here, words are not only something to be read, but something to be “seen” and “constructed,” prompting a reconsideration of the very mechanisms through which communication takes place.
The new works presented in this exhibition take Ryōhei Koiso’s female portraits as their point of departure. Furukawa, however, is not attempting to recreate the figures or narratives depicted in these paintings. Rather, her interest lies in how the “name” given to a portrait shapes the viewer’s perception and the meaning of the work. By being given a name, a person becomes recognizable as a distinct individual; at the same time, that name can limit, frame, and continually reshape the image we form of them.
The title The Cause of Becoming a Name points to a question about what exists before a name comes into being, as well as what may emerge only through the act of naming. By turning her attention to the ambiguous and unstable space between painting and language, image and designation, Furukawa quietly questions the mechanisms through which we come to perceive and understand the world.
This exhibition opens up a space where the act of looking at a painting and the act of reading language intersect, inviting us to reconsider how images and words shape one another—and how, through naming, new possibilities of seeing and imagining may emerge.