Shane Keisuke Berkery: Shane, Come Back

Carl Kostyál is delighted to present ‘Shane, Come Back’, a presentation of ten new paintings by the Irish-Japanese artist Shane Keisuke Berkery (b. 1992). Berkery’s debut with Carl Kostyál in London marks the artist’s debut solo exhibition with the gallery and in London.

“Shane Keisuke Berkery (b. 1992) is an Irish-Japanese painter who was born in Japan, moved to the USA as a child, then to Ireland, studying at the NCAD in Dublin then later for his MA at the Royal College of Art in London, where he now resides. Such a transnational upbringing, with all the upheaval and radical adjustment to language, culture, social codes and expectations that accompany it, is key to a decoding of his complex pictorial compositions. The only constant in his peripatetic life has been making art. The central preoccupation in his practice is his clear sense that identity, far from being something fixed or culturally singular, is contingent, and requires continual negotiation.

It is no accident that the Western film genre, and all its associated myth-building and rich visuals, serves both as the scenic backdrop and provider of many of the characters in these works. The exhibition takes its title from the 1953 Western ‘Shane’, the phrase shouted out by the little boy at the gunslinger central character as he leaves town, wounded. The genre is responsible in large part for creating, reinforcing and disseminating a notion of American identity as defined by the self-reliant hero, moral clarity decided by action, distrust of institutions and the land’s wide-open scapes as the site of personal reinvention and freedom, achieved through struggle. In ‘Liminal Procession’ it clashes with its direct opposite, the ancient Japanese culture of duty, adherence to social hierarchy, public obligation triumphing over personal desire, rigid social codes and conflict serving to preserve order and honour.”

– Katharine Kostyál

Shane Keisuke Berkery (b. 1992, Tokyo), lives and works in London. Keisuke Berkery will have his debut solo exhibition with Carl Kostyál on Savile Row in April 2026. Recently, Keisuke Berkery participated in ‘The Cloak of Dreams’ curated by Carl Kostyál at SWCAC in Shenzhen (2025) as well as the gallery’s Invitational Draw Jam residency, held at the Al Moudira in Luxor (2025).