New York gallery opens with Hiroka Yamashita

Celebrating the gallery’s 15th anniversary, Kiang Malingue is thrilled to announce the opening of a space in New York.

Located in the Lower East Side, the gallery will open on May 9, 2025 on the fourth floor of 50 Eldridge Street. The 3,500-square-foot space marks Kiang Malingue’s presence in the vibrant New York art scene as they continue to support the growing roster of established and emerging artists from Asia, Europe and the United States.

New York came through years of discussion between Lorraine Kiang and Edouard Malingue about the vision of the gallery, and about their hope for the future. Coming from diverse backgrounds—France and Hong Kong/US—the gallery is expanding from the beloved hub in Hong Kong. The gallery’s programme has developed persistence over the years, and has become the way in which the gallery sees the world and a glimpse of its possibilities through their artists’ unique perception.

Kiang Malingue inaugurates the New York location with The Lights from the Deep Mountains, an exhibition of recent paintings by Hiroka Yamashita. This is the Japanese artist’s second exhibition with Kiang Malingue following Field, Force, Surface in 2022, also her debut in New York since graduating from the School of Visual Arts in 2017.

Inheriting and transforming through the act of painting an ancient way of existence for which the relationship between the mundane and the spiritual is conspicuously immediate, Yamashita has created in 2025 more than a dozen paintings that depict fabulous phenomena and forsaken connections. Yamashita: “The people who once lived on the islands found spiritual presence in nature—such as the sun and stars, rocks and forests, trees and waterfalls—and they worshipped them. It wasn’t religion in the way we usually think of it today. These feelings of reverence were not only expressions of gratitude for nature’s blessings, but also earnest prayers born from fear of disasters—deeply connected to everyday life, meant to protect their way of living and to carry life forward.”

Yamashita has developed a renewed interest in the country’s enduring customs, folk tales and beliefs since she returned to Japan in 2019: “These old customs, even when their original meanings have been forgotten, are signs that people once prayed there. They carry traces of love, care, fear, remorse, and mourning. When I come across these remnants of belief or everyday life, I think of the people who once lived there—and I feel like, somehow, they’ve passed something on to me.” Re-examining Japanese traditional culture against the reality of a rapidly changing world, Yamashita wishes to rediscover, retrieve and retell: “The things and prayers that have quietly continued in the remote mountains of this island nation stand in stark contrast to the news of global affairs that we are exposed to every day, and they shine with an incredibly strong light for me.”

About Hiroka Yamashita
Hiroka Yamashita (born in 1991 in Hyogo, Japan) lives and works in Okayama. She received her BFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York in 2017 and her MFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University, New Jersey in 2019. Recent solo exhibitions include: Earthing, Caprii, Sies + Höke, Düsseldorf (2024); koworo-koworo, BLUM Gallery, Los Angeles (2024); GEN, Taka Ishii Gallery, Tokyo (2023); Fūdo, Tanya Leighton, Berlin (2022); project N 84, Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery (2021); Cosmos Remembered, The Club, Tokyo (2021); and Evanescent Horizon (with Naoya Inose), FOMO Art, Taipei (2021).