Yumeno Goto | “Through the Veil”

Press release

Long Story Short is proud to present Through the Veil, a solo exhibition of new paintings by Japanese artist Yumeno Goto, on view from May 2 through June 15, 2025, at 54 Henry Street. Marking her second solo exhibition with the gallery, Through the Veil continues Goto’s exploration of the female form as a vessel for transformation, spiritual passage, and liberation.

Known for her hauntingly layered oil paintings of modern-day goddesses, Goto creates works that speak to the unseen thresholds between body and spirit, mythology and memory, self and other. Her signature technique—building color and atmosphere through glazed oil on wood panels—produces luminous, veil-like surfaces that feel suspended in time. In Through the Veil, she invites viewers into a quiet but charged space where female figures cast off invisible coverings and move toward self-defined freedom.

The exhibition features twelve new works created in 2025. Across these compositions, women appear as mythic beings caught in acts of emergence: stepping through darkness, summoning hidden light, or listening to the murmurs of unseen forces. In Liberation, four women push through a dark pictorial boundary into illumination. To Discover the Light Beyond the Veil centers a figure reaching outward, as if calling the goddess forth, while The Whispering Root Circle depicts three faceless women joined by underground currents, drawing quiet strength from a shared, unseen root system.

The veil, in Goto’s work, functions as both material and metaphor. It stands for societal expectation, internalized restraint, and inherited narrative—what must be crossed, shed, or reimagined. Her figures do not hide behind this veil; they move through it. “To take on a guise is not to deceive,” she writes, “but to summon truth.”

Using symbolic gestures, elemental forces, and archetypal postures, Goto imbues each work with quiet urgency. Her palette contrasts earthy darkness with glimmers of radiant light, and the physical texture of the paint lends her subjects a grounded, almost geological presence.

Yumeno Goto (b. 1996, Tokyo) lives and works in Gifu, Japan. She received her MFA from Tokyo University of the Arts in 2022, where she was awarded the prestigious Art Power Award. Recent exhibitions include Frangere Magna Caelum at Tokyo International Gallery, Between the Worlds at F2T Gallery in Milan, and Attitude of the Venus at Long Story Short NYC. She has also exhibited at NADA Miami, Art Fair Tokyo, Lurf MUSEUM, and biscuit gallery. Goto’s work continues to garner attention for its symbolic resonance and atmospheric depth, establishing her as a singular voice in contemporary painting.