“2024 Exhibition AshuPine” @ Tokyo International Gallery and Instagram Beauty Filter Eroticism (IBFE) アシュパイン

women of today for the girls of tomorrow
1996 born Jennie Kim: I need to feel like myself whenever and wherever I am. And the CHANEL 25 is the perfect bag to carry wherever I go! CHANEL has become a part of me. It’s become an identity of mine. I relate to the brand very much. I feel comfortable and beautiful and cool whenever I’m in CHANEL. I want to say it’s a part of me.

1994 born AshuPine is an artist, designer, and business manager for Ashpine Inc.. Engaged in diverse creative fields such as painting, spatial design, and haute couture, AshuPine applies her unique techniques and refined sensibility to each work. Her detailed yet bold drawing style and unconventional approach have established “AshuPine” as a multifaceted identity, constantly challenging traditional categories to create truly original expressions.

AshuPine is an artist who creates art for those who cherish space. Her creative endeavours span a wide range of fields – including painting, sculpture, architecture, interior design, and fashion – through a unique blend of techniques and aesthetics. Gaining attention for her fluid and boundary-crossing approach, she continues to expand her artistic realm.
Her works capture the fleeting beauty of light and shadow found in nature and are expressed in three-dimensional forms using a variety of materials. Through interaction with lighting, they produce diverse visual expressions that add depth to any space. Far beyond mere decoration, her art engages in dialogue with its surroundings, offering new value to environments such as hotels, offices, restaurants, and private residences.
Through collaborations with global interior design firms, primarily based in Asia, she also leads art direction for high-end model rooms and luxury hotels around the world.
AshuPine’s works fuse strength and delicacy, at times with avant-garde flair, forming a distinctive and unparalleled style that continues to push the boundaries of spatial art.

The Tokyo International Gallery at the Terrada Art Complex on Tennozu Island, an up-and-coming, hip art hub on the industrial coast of Tokyo Bay, was heavily promoting AshuPine’s solo exhibition. I could see new promotional posts daily on three different Instagram accounts, which made me curious about the reception party, aka Opening Birthday Cocktail Party. Very charming AshuPine and I exchanged business cards and she responded to my comments about the exhibition with “Ganbarimasu 頑張ります I’ll do my best”.

After the exhibition, via AshuPine’s Instagram page, I was able to follow her next projects including eclectic artistic practices.

Original translation by Instagram (“He” should be written with “she”, other mistakes I did not change.):

bijutsutecho_com
Edited
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7 h
AshuPine 2025 Exhibition, a solo exhibition by AshuPine will be held on June 4th to June 16th on the second floor of the Mitsukoshi Main Building in Ginza!

AshuPine is an artist who creates a wide variety of fields including painting and sculpture, architecture, interior design, fashion, and more. AshuPine, who creates art towards “people who value space,” adds new value to various scenes, including hotels, offices, restaurants, and mansions, by creating a variety of facial expressions through interaction with lighting.

Being a certified creator and influencer for Condé Nast, which publishes “VOGUE” and “GQ,” he participated in the ART SHOW held at London Search Gallery, an exhibition at Paris Louvre Museum, and an exhibition at Saint Pau Hospital, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. He also won the Japanese Art Contribution Award, the AIDS Charity Art Exhibition Kyoto Prefecture Governor’s Award, the reiwa Japan-French Art Exchange Award, the Orange Ribbon Peace Contribution Art Award, and the Senshoya Gallery Art Award. AshuPine, which also collaborates with global Asian-focused interior companies, has exhibited works at The Capitol Kempinski Singapore, Bulgari Resort Dubai, Mandarin Oriental Taipei and more ✅

This exhibition will include new techniques that have never been seen before, and paintings and sculptures that combine different materials. How about experiencing AshuPine’s current location in the exhibition space, with a solo exhibition that only happens once a year, and doesn’t you dare to add a specific theme to the exhibition? 👀

#art #exhibition #tokyo #Ginza #Ginzamitsukoshi #AshuPine #アート #展覧会 #東京 #銀座 #銀座三越 #空間 #PROMOTION

https://www.instagram.com/p/DKiyFe-Sfvk/

The viewer notices that AshuPine’s works resonate decorative paintings and sculptures, focused on interior design. She enjoys modelling. A subtle social commentary can be detected in her private and not so private photographs.
”Return my time. 私の時間を返して。” speaks volumes, as it can be metaphorically interpreted as “Give me back my youth”.

For a nearly 70-year-old artist who has lived in Japan for almost 45 years, this phrase reverberate particularly strongly. As a feminist from West-Berlin, I have always placed human dignity first. “Give me back my time (youth),” however, implies a life phase of attractive, 31-year-old, AshuPine that suggests poor, exploitative treatment by one or more persons, probably men.
The Zeitgeist is overloaded with female, erotic-looking influencers. Many earn a lot of money and know how to market themselves. Branding is necessary, “ergo” the beauty filter has to be often applied to women. AshuPine, as Representative of Ashpine Inc., has obviously thought about how to sell her artworks and monetize her image. Her artist name suggests eroticism, as “Ashu” subsists the French pronunciation for “H”. H (etch) in Japanese means Eros/Sex. “Pine” is a metaphorical representation of endurance, resilience, and hope.

Inevitably the question arises: Is AshuPine a prisoner of the toxic beauty craze?
My impression says a vague “no”. She still controls her face within acceptable, tolerable parameters. Especially when you compare those digitally constructed images in women’s magazines or fashion magazines, AshuPine appears quite natural.

AshuPine, THE Artist ザ・アーティスト, finds herself in this evolutionary process from “Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto” to the algorithm-driven “You swipe the filter, Instagram does the rest”. This gender-specific attention economy has become a tool for career women. The result, however, provokes the inner instinct: I, the artist Mario A, don’t want to see this generic face. For this reason, Japanese female artists will have a hard time hiding selfie dysmorphia.
Fortunately, AshuPine with her effortless, unaffected charm made the reception party a successful one because she remained good-humoured throughout those hours. Bravissima.
I wish her all the best and success for her future as an artist. Stay the way you are.

Basel-Tokyo, 2025/6/6
Mario A

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Instagram Beauty Filter Eroticism (IBFE)

AshuPine’s exhibition at the Tokyo International Gallery has deeply concerned me with how women deal with beauty filters. As a nearly 70-year-old feminist, my position is clearly defined. In the spirit of Sartre’s “The Idiot of the Family”: “If the world is hell, we are damned from birth.”
And since, as it has been said elsewhere, hell is other people, damnation consists in being damned with them – collectively. Damned = condemned and lost for happiness.

Whether the freedom of the individual (here: the woman) was objectively unfree can only be determined after death. What is certain is that in this objective unfreedom, the woman attempts to shape her future with the help of beauty filters and augmented reality devices. Here we ask ourselves: doesn’t the woman realize that the beauty filter proclaims and promises a dangerous beauty?

At the touch of a button, but with the soft focus often comes self-doubt, right?
A friendship, regardless of gender context, becomes a farce. A self-deception and self-destruction.

Big eyes, full lips.
Beauty plays a big role in augmented reality filters. But beauty does not automatically mean makeup.
It is a betrayal of women’s universally intended freedom, the undermining of emancipation, human dignity, equality, subsidiarity and “be yourself.”
AshuPine attempts to create connectivity through ephemeral beauty.
Art advisors and dealers are turning to the ultra-contemporary to discover tomorrow’s blue-chip stars.
In this intellectual balancing act, the branding component takes on an important function, which is exploited by cosmetics and luxury accessories companies.

For female artists, it’s also about proportionality (Verhältnismässigkeit). You can have a career even without makeup, because the works of art speak for themselves, autonomously. If makeup becomes a generic beauty filter, then I, as a fellow artist, have a big problem.
Eroticism is a woman’s weapon. (Like tears.)
For this reason, I coined the term “Instagram Beauty Filter Eroticism” (IBFE).
Another template for the Zeitgeist.
I luv you guys! It’s Friday! Now let’s paaaaarty!

Basel-Tokyo 2025/6/6
Mario A

https://www.instagram.com/p/DKhiGQ3tsPD/

https://www.instagram.com/p/DKZbrU4Sjrf/

Hey babe! Filters are a tool of patriarchal heterocapitalism, designed to make women look the way cis hetero white men (think they) prefer, so that hetero women of all racial backgrounds think they need to buy products (hello multi billion dollar beauty & wellness industries) in order to conform to a literally non-human beauty standard invented by a bunch of tech bros in Silicon Valley.

What does that look like? Smooth, poreless, wrinkle- and blemish- free skin, blushing cheeks, plump juicy lips, wide doe eyes, light-colored irises, a narrowed nose, and a thinner jawline. These are Aryan / Anglo Saxon ideals of beauty that certainly don’t conform to my Ashkenazi Jewish nose, nor many other parts of my face. They’re also attributes that signal sexual pleasure and youthfulness (often verging on childlike or even infant-esque 😳).

If you follow someone who regularly uses filters, keep in mind you don’t really know what they actually look like. Take account of how that influences your perception of the content they create.

This is not a calling out (wear make-up! have plastic surgery! be free! I’m not trying to tell you how to be). But it *is* a calling in—for women to opt out of an insidious tool created for use on yet another social media platform created by cis het white men. For you to know whose game your playing, and choose to walk off the field.

This filter is called baby <3 by Lazy777, and Billie Eilish used it in her Stories today! Thanks for the inspo, Billie 💋. And of course this one goes out to our hero in dismantling the beauty industrial complex @jessicadefino_ 🙏.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/CRiG8DUjkNU/

https://www.instagram.com/p/DKbycUhTqJ5/

mariakamiyama
Stay young✌🏻
#大嘘つき

https://www.instagram.com/p/DIqduUdSUTv/

Low body weight in women: health damage caused by malnutrition “Measures should be taken to treat it as a disease”
女性の低体重 栄養不足での健康被害 “疾患として対策を”
TV-NHK 2025年6月3日
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20250603/k10014824761000.html

ここに載せた画像は、すべて「好意によりクリエーティブ・コモン・センス」の文脈で、日本美術史の記録の為に発表致します。 Creative Commons Attribution　Noncommercial-NoDerivative Works; screenshots and photos: cccs courtesy creative common sense