Shizico Yi Archive

Feature Exhibition

Modern Ancient
Solo Exhibition by Shizico Yi 2025-26

80 new paintings & 3 new poems seen together for the first time
the collection available at gallery shop

A sneak-peek of Punch Diary Series — Shizico Yi's latest project, Punch Diary is an ongoing drawing series (since Feb 2026)

Shizico Yi’s drawing practice centres on immediacy and perception; she approaches drawing as a direct means of recording how she encounters the world—each line tracing not only form, but memory, presence, and emotional residue. For Yi, drawing becomes a contour of lived experience, whether observed or remembered.

The Punch Diary series documents the early life of Punch-kun (パンチくん), a Japanese macaque born in late July 2025. Widely followed online, Punch’s story—abandoned by his mother at birth and raised by zookeepers, forming an attachment to a surrogate plush “Oran-Mama”—resonated deeply with Shizu's childhood memories.
Since February 2026, Yi has followed and drawn Punch’s daily development, capturing fleeting expressions and subtle emotional shifts.
This series is executed on Georgian oil paper, a surface traditionally associated with painting, the works emphasise texture and resistance, worked with ink and charcoal to heighten the tactile quality of the line, reinforcing the physical and emotional closeness of the act of drawing.
Across the series, Punch’s gestures and presence are rendered with a sensitivity that blurs the boundary between human and animal experience.
Pictures credits: * Punch Diary-8 Months, Reaching * Punch Diary-6 months, On Papa's Shoulder (Ink, Charcoal, Gesso on Georgian oil paper-thick board, each drawing is in A4 size. )

Introducing the New Abstract Series, 2026
The New Abstract Series marks a significant new chapter in Shizico Yi's evolving painting practice. Guided by a lifelong commitment to artistic enquiry, Yi continually challenges her own visual language, resisting repetition and the comfort of established formulas.
Rather than revisiting familiar ground, these paintings represent a natural progression towards greater pictorial refinement, where gesture, colour, and surface become increasingly distilled. The series reflects an artist who embraces change as an essential part of making, allowing each body of work to open new possibilities rather than reaffirm what has come before.