河田みのり 「ユニコーンの肉」個展 @ SUMMER of LOVE KAWADA Minori "Unicorn meat" solo exhibition @ SUMMER of LOVE

KAWADA Minori’s 河田みのり solo exhibition, “Unicorn Meat” 「ユニコーンの肉」, currently on view at the gallery ‘SUMMER of LOVE’, cements her status as one of the most exciting and conceptually rigorous voices to emerge from the Tokyo University of the Arts, this March 2026. Kawada bypasses traditional landscape and figurative tropes to deliver a deeply visceral, progressive experience that challenges the limits of contemporary painting practice.

The viewers experience of “Unicorn Meat” lies in its brilliant execution of an oxymoron. Kawada manages to conjure the tactile presence of something that cannot, or should not, exist. Without ever illustrating a literal unicorn, her canvases act as conduits for its flesh—rendering it soft, cold, and deceptively weightless. Her pigments are transformed into a hyper-specific texture that registers on a mental level before it does give you on a visual one. By introducing the raw concept of “meat” into a pristine aesthetic structure, Kawada intentionally ruptures the eclectic possibilities of pure abstraction. Her works generate a persistent psychological weight, peeping her beautifully written statement in mind:

I have never seen a unicorn.
I have never touched one or heard its voice.
And yet, I felt like I could imagine what it might taste like.

When I place unrelated shapes and colours next to each other, they
seem to forget what they originally meant and, somehow, begin
holding hands on their own.
They bring with them sense of nostalgia, unease, and just a little
bit of fear.

It looks soft.
It feels cold.
I think it probably tastes faint.

I never quite know what it is in the end.

In the end, I never saw a unicorn.
But somehow, its flesh feels strangely real.

Kawada’s very encouraging risky, cutting-edge approach relies heavily on subtle friction. The deliberate tension between delicate brushwork and unsettling, instinctive and emotional themes keeps the viewer off-balance. She refuses to allow her paintings to settle into decorative art; instead, she injects a quiet, underlying anxiety vs. allure glamor that gives her artistic practice a kind of appealing, magnetic intensity.
For an artist fresh out of Tokyo University of the Arts, Kawada exhibits an extraordinary, mature restraint. Mythic flesh “Unicorn Meat” runs until the 30th of this month.

Tokyo, 28th of October
Mario A

河田みのりKAWADA Minori @ INSTAGRAM
https://www.instagram.com/p/DdZUZQWk0im/?img_index=1