Pace Prints, New York, is hosting Japanese artist Yusuke Hanai’s first-ever solo show in the city. Titled “Perseverance”, the presentation gathers the artist’s new works on paper while revisiting the themes that sit at the heart of Hanai’s visual world: resilience, warm humour, and the relationship between humans and nature.
Blending the aesthetic of 1960s underground comics with retro-Americana surf culture, Hanai has long expressed his own voice through an original rhythm forged between these two poles. His characters appear sometimes melancholic, sometimes funny, yet always deeply human; the small disasters or jolts they encounter serve as gentle metaphors the artist uses to point toward universal feelings.
For this exhibition, Hanai has worked with a new technique:
He stretches paper over wooden panels and paints with gouache, deliberately allowing colours to bleed, tones to mingle, and line boundaries to embrace the freedom of “getting it wrong.” That imperfect beauty he loves carries a palpable warmth in these works.
The crowded cast of characters turns every scene into a little story. In this fictional universe that stretches from human figures to anthropomorphic animals, the protagonists trip each other up, support one another, confront obstacles, find comfort, or come together in a shared gesture. In Hanai’s world, oddity is balanced by a light smile, and sadness by a soft sense of solidarity.
The artist’s central question is clear:
“Making mistakes is human—so where does our strength to keep going come from?”
In the title piece Perseverance, two figures push forward against a fierce wind, marking those invisible daily struggles that flash across life like tiny comets. Untitled 2 focuses on a simple yet tender moment of rest shared beneath a vast night sky.
Hanai is also a passionate surfer, so the sometimes harmonious, sometimes rough relationship between humans and nature appears frequently in his work. For instance, Face, one of the exhibition’s largest pieces, depicts a surfer turning back toward the water after possibly being toppled by a wave moments earlier. Nature ceases to be an obstacle and becomes a companion to the courage of trying again.
In Untitled, trees become shelter for a couple; in works such as Team Up and Join Force, humans and animals share the same “mission.” In Hanai’s universe, harmony is only made possible by the resilient heartbeat that overcomes chaos.
Published in parallel with the exhibition, Pace Prints is releasing a new edition—the gallery’s first collaboration with Hanai:
The print “Perseverance” is produced using soft-ground etching, relief printing, and pochoir techniques, carefully carrying Hanai’s dense colour layers and characteristic drawing energy.
Location: Pace Prints, 536 West 22nd Street, NYC
Duration: Continues until 20 December 2025
