Volery Gallery presents: Mauka to Makai - A debut Middle East solo exhibition by Shingo Yamazaki

Los Angeles based artist shows dreamlike paintings on memory, migration, and identity

Last updated: July 28, 2025 | 12:01

Manuel Almario, Senior News Editor

2 MIN READ

Volery Gallery is pleased to present Mauka to Makai, a solo exhibition by Los Angeles-based artist Shingo Yamazaki, opening on June 26 and continuing through September 1, 2025.

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Dubai: Volery Gallery is thrilled to unveil Mauka to Makai, the highly anticipated solo exhibition by Los Angeles–based artist Shingo Yamazaki. Opening June 26 and running through September 1, this exhibition marks Yamazaki’s debut in the Middle East and his first collaboration with Volery—an evocative journey into memory, identity, and the emotional topographies of home.

Inspired by his upbringing in Hawai‘i and his Korean-Japanese American heritage, Yamazaki’s dreamlike paintings bridge the natural and the architectural, the remembered and the imagined. The title Mauka to Makai—Hawaiian for “from the mountains to the sea”—becomes a powerful metaphor for the artist’s exploration of cultural shifts and inner landscapes.

Through delicate veils of translucent paint, Yamazaki conjures liminal worlds where interiors merge with wild terrain, and ghostlike figures appear mid-thought, mid-memory—quiet and unresolved. These works act as portals, not just to places, but to states of becoming, where longing, transition, and hybridity reside. Each canvas invites viewers to pause, peer through layered recollections, and reflect on what it means to live between worlds.

Rooted in ecological nuance and cultural displacement, Mauka to Makai is a meditation on the beauty and dissonance of migration, capturing the psychological terrain of a home that’s constantly shifting—neither here nor there, but always becoming.

About the artist
Born in Honolulu, Shingo Yamazaki is a Los Angeles–based artist whose atmospheric paintings blur the lines between place, memory, and personal mythology. His layered, architectural compositions are known for their use of translucent glazes and hidden figures—echoes of a fragmented past. Yamazaki holds a BA from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa and has exhibited with Steve Turner, Sow & Tailor, Steven Zevitas Gallery, Charlie James Gallery, and Richard Heller Gallery. His work has appeared in New American Paintings, BOOOOOOOM, Flux, and more. This fall, he will join the prestigious Headlands Center for the Arts Residency in California.

Exhibition dates: June 26 – September 1, 2025

Location: Volery Gallery, Dubai International Financial Centre

Schedule your private viewing: volerygallery.com/reservations

Also Read: World Art Dubai 2025: A dazzling global art showcase with over 10,000 artworks

Manuel AlmarioSenior News Editor

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