AG18 is showcasing Fuko Kastuda at the new ASTORIA ARTSHOW.

The Astoria Artshow is conceived as a preview edition for Vienna’s new, central art fair, which will take place starting in September 2027 and will establish a novel, contemporary format on the international art fair calendar. The Astoria Artshow is organized by VAU Vienna Art United, an alliance of 35 leading Viennese galleries working together to create an attractive, sophisticated, and sustainable art event.

Fuko Katsuda, born in 1995 in Osaka (JP), lives and works in Vienna (AT). She studied at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design at the University of the Arts London and at the University of Applied Arts Vienna.
Through the mediums of painting and drawing, Katsuda creates figurative worlds featuring humanoid protagonists in scenes that are both mystical and seemingly everyday. They touch, observe, and play.

The visual narrative—rich in allusions—can be understood as a stoic vision of a cosmic interconnectedness between the human and the more-than-human in a post-humanist sense: What does it mean to be human? And how is human existence transformed by advancing technological development?

Katudas’ figures—concrete yet translucent, neither clearly male nor female—are “simply part of the landscape in which they exist”; they know “that they belong to the Earth and the universe and that everything is temporary,” according to the artist.
Her figures observe, interact with their environment, overlap, and exist as a blend of bodies and manifestations of life in its growth and decay. They are embedded in vegetation, in forests, and in the wilderness. A ghostly glow lends their appearance something intense yet fleeting—as if they could pass by at any moment or merge with the background.