The Animal We Carry

Kai Yoda’s work arises from a dialogue between several ways of producing images. His oil paintings on linen are not fixed images. Rather, they appear as surfaces in transformation. Built up in layers, they move between traditional painting and contemporary tools, including artificial intelligence. The artist uses AI to bring forth unexpected colors, patterns, or images. Yet his work deliberately distances itself from an overly smooth digital aesthetic. Instead, he seeks to reveal traces of accident, fragility, imperfection, and matter.

The experience of the exhibition extends beyond the space of the canvas. Kai Yoda uses materials such as leather, beeswax, wood, and brass, notably in the works “Samuel” and “Daniel.” The leather elements are developed in collaboration with Marie-Ève Lecavalier and exist between garment, sculpture, and painting. These materials create a more physical relationship to the works. They appeal to touch, smell, and the body’s memory.

Rather than telling a story, Kai Yoda creates an environment of coexistence. The natural and the fabricated, the constructed and the instinctive, the living and the artificial ultimately come together. The exhibition makes visible a fragile zone of contact, where the human and the animal, the gaze and sensation, begin to merge.