Over the Influence is pleased to present Brooklyn-based artist Hiroya Kurata’s third solo exhibition with the gallery, Blunderbuss. This exhibition opens on May 20th and will remain on view through July 2, 2023. “I’m painting my life. Nothing more,” says Kurata. And certainly nothing less. The sixteen works in Blunderbuss record what it’s like to be alive in the year 2023 in America’s largest, most culturally robust city, New York. This is what food looks like. (Highly processed white cake with frosting and strawberries.) This is what children looked like. (Chaotic, cheerful blurs of energetic life force in cotton shorts.) And light. (Dappled.) And parks. (Serene.) And mothers. (Overworked but ever-present.) The exhibition serves as evidence, testement, and proof of the way we lived and the ways we made sense of the rapidly evolving world around us.

The Japanese word enikki means photo diary. Each of these paintings is based on a photo from Kurata’s enikki. As the father of three young children, his diary is consumed mostly by photos of them, his wife, the toysthey play with, the activities they enjoy, the park by their house that they visit as often as they can. The title of the show is even borrowed from a children’s book beloved by his daughter titled Three Robbers. While the story refers to the antique shotguns with flared muzzles, the homonym applies equally well to the often blundering, clumsy movements of children.