LY is a Tokyo artist born and bred, and in her art, she depicts her beloved city through the prism of her imagination. Her painting, drawing and sculpture muse on modern life in a neo-pop, Superflat style. And there is one main character at the centre of it all, LUV. The black and white endearing creature appears in different settings, from cityscapes to lush forests, all depicted with hard-edged planes of colour. Through LUV, LY also tells personal anecdotes to document broader cultural trends and histories. The painting The Skate Shop in the Woods (2020), for example, shows a quintessential pandemic scenario: LUV arriving at a shop to find it closed. One iteration of LUV is curled on the floor, looking lonely, while another comically pokes its head out from behind a shrub as if to say ‘peek-a-boo’. Together, the different sides of LUV’s personality perfectly capture the strange mix of loneliness, boredom and absurdity felt by many people during global lockdowns.
