Artist presentation

Misato Kurimune

Misato Kurimune (b.1988) is a contemporary artist based in Hyogo, Japan.

Through lens-based works and AI-assisted photography, she explores the boundaries between perception and generation, authorship and algorithm.

Kurimune received her MFA in Printmaking from Kyoto Seika University in 2013. She is represented by TEZUKAYAMA GALLERY (Osaka), where she has held solo exhibitions in 2021, 2018, and 2016. Her work has also been featured in notable group shows and fairs including Kyoto Art for Tomorrow 2021 (Sankei Shimbun Prize), Daegu Art Factory (South Korea), and the TOKYO ART BOOK FAIR 2024 at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo. In 2023, she released her first artist book "Images" (SunM Color), and has collaborated with fashion brand TOKYO BASE and ROOTOTE. Her work is part of the public collection at the Machida City Museum of Graphic Arts. Across her practice, Kurimune engages with questions of visuality, beauty, and co-creation in an era mediated by code and prompts.

Artist statement

This series explores the delicate tension between human intention and algorithmic suggestion. Each image begins with a flower I photographed and evolves through prompt-based AI generation, then curated through my artistic sensibility. Rather than merely producing beauty, the work reflects on the shifting agency in image-making: Where does authorship begin and end when machines participate in choosing what is beautiful? The flower-a timeless symbol of transience and aesthetic ideal-serves as a vessel for this question. Each image emerges from the interplay of instinct and code, control and randomness, curation and generation. By inviting technology into the creative process, I seek not to surrender authorship but to reconsider its definition. The resulting images are less about perfection than about process, ambiguity, and shared authorship.

In an era where images bloom from prompts rather than petals, this series asks: Who chooses what is beautiful now?