Gut Friendly

Public Gallery is pleased to present Gut Friendly, a duo exhibition of painting and sculpture by artists Victor Bengtsson and Umico Niwa, whose individual practices uniquely trace cycles of decay and renewal, together meditating on digestion as a poetic framework for processes of transformation. From this dialogue emerges a meditation on friendship – a porous exchange through which individual forms are metabolized into hybridized wholes, conjured through mythical acts of excavation and preservation. Victor Bengtsson (b. 1997, Copenhagen, Denmark) lives and works in Copenhagen, Denmark. Recent solo exhibitions include Town Squares, Andersen's, Copenhagen (2025); Horse droppings are not figs, O—Overgaden, Copenhagen (2025); Når den hvide rod rejser sig / When the white root rises, Public Gallery, London (2024); The Gardener’s Son, Mendes Wood DM, Brussels (2023); and Proscenium, Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo (2021). Permanent collections include the Fuglsang Kunstmuseum, Toreby, Denmark and the Danjuma Collection, London, UK. Umico Niwa (b. 1991, Nagoya, Aichi, Japan) lives and works between the USA and Japan. Recent solo exhibitions include Memory Palace, Asia Society, Houston (2025); The Harbinger of Luck: Made of Kisses and Clovers x+x+, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Texas (2024); My Life Inside A Shoe (the phantom cricket), Fig Gallery, Tokyo (2023); Mortal Afflictions, Final Hot Desert, Salt Lake City (2022); The Quantified Elf (and how it came to love itself), Someday Gallery, New York (2022); Neighbourly Pest, Tilling, Montreal; Solar Coochie, Holding Contemporary, Portland (2020); and Fruiting Bodies, American Institute of Thoughts and Feeling, Tucson. Recent residencies include the CORE program at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (2025); the NARS Foundation, New York (2023); and Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Omaha (2022).

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