About The Artist

Hideyuki Shoji is an up and coming Japanese contemporary artist, who currently lives and works in London. Through his works, Shoji endeavors to raise simple questions to the discreet phenomena of everyday life – to explore the answers for these simple questions; Shoji creates art works that often arises from the manipulation of everyday material through the ideas influenced by those of Martin Heidegger. Shoji tackles this concept through a unique combination of various media; he makes an abnormal alteration to ordinary objects before putting it back into the day-to-day situation. His sculptures are made using ordinary materials, suggesting alternative points of view within a normal social situation. Through everyday trivial objects, such as fish, fruits, chewing gum or clothing, the artist attempts to generate surprises or simply establish a unique narrative by exploiting their unnoticed and overlooked elements within the complexities of everyday life. As he continues further to develop unconventional perspectives on the everyday objects, he has now begun to incorporate and exercise his interests in the performance arts incorporated with his sculptures. He actively plays around with social structures through his sculptures to highlight out-of-the-ordinary situations, often amusing, which would otherwise be the seen as the mere everyday. His work has been showcased in group exhibitions in Japan, UK and Germany and recently won the People’s Choice Award in 2011 at the Signature Art Awards in London and was also shortlisted in 2002 for the Yoshiwara Jiryo Awards in Osaka, Japan