Acquavella Galleries is pleased to present Stardust, a solo exhibition of fifteen paintings by the Japanese artist Yuka Kashihara in its Palm Beach gallery, on view from October 15 through December 8, 2025.

This suite of acrylic and oil paintings on canvas marks a continuation of the artist’s interest in imagining the otherworldly, while looking even farther to the cosmos. Her work is often sparked by instigating moments and views observed while traveling or walking, which she then blends with conjured vistas. In her new paintings, Kashihara explores our connection with the ancient and cosmic, combining the two ideas by exploring the origin of all organic matter, beginning deep in space.

Kashihara cites Michael Chown’s book, The Magic Furnace, as an inspiration for her new work. He states: “Every atom in our bodies has an extraordinary history. Our blood, our food, our books, our clothes–everything contains atoms forged in blistering furnaces deep inside stars, which were blown into space by those stars’ cataclysmic explosions and deaths…The birth of every atom was marked by cosmic events on an enormous scale, against a backdrop of unimaginable heat and cold, brightness and darkness, space and time.” The artist’s newest body of work draws on this idea of celestial kinship.

In Universal Stardust (2025) and Universal Stardust - II (2025), the artist layers vivid shades of acrylic and oil that evoke watercolors in their blurred softness. The strokes and colors bleed and interconnect like the atoms that connect all organic matter. Kashihara simultaneously blends human interconnectedness with deep space, where clusters of atoms or constellations intertwine with what could be ancient flora and fauna deep on the ocean floor or from another planet.

Regarding this body of work, Kashihara also pays homage to her purposeful commitment to painting as exploration from a young age. The artist states: “When I was seventeen and unsure of my future, I made one clear decision: I would devote myself to painting. I pictured that wish sailing to the edge of the galaxy, like a handful of stardust cast into the night.”

Harnessing the boundless raw material of creation, Kashihara’s paintings offer a duality of the origin of life and its comic roots.

Yuka Kashihara: Stardust is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue with an essay by poet, critic, and curator John Yau.

About Yuka Kashihara (b. 1980)

Born in Hiroshima Prefecture in Japan, Kashihara received her B.F.A. in Japanese Painting from the Musashino Art University in Tokyo in 2006 before moving to Germany that year. Studying at the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig, Germany, she received her Meisterschüler (Master Graduate) in 2015.