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PAST
EXHIBITIONS
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Japanese
Women Artists: On the Joy of Life
September 28 ~ October 18, 2006
Opening Reception September 29 (Fri.) 6 ~ 8 pm
Curated by Thalia Vrachopoulos, PhD.
From Left to Right: Rev Okui, Matsuno
Moroi, Akiko Numajiri, Tsukushi Hibi, Thalia Vrachopolous, Mitsuko
Saito, Albert Lotto, Naoko Minegishi, Michael Yuge
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| These women artists have been showing as a group since
1993 and are unified by a certain feeling in their work that emits
warmth, gentility, and a certain softness not usually found in many
contemporary works that have recently tended to be violent in some
way. However, this does not mean that their work is bereft of interest
in contemporary issues or that they’re afraid of engaging with
their own time, just that their focus lies in the comforting aspects
of life. In this sense they are strong in their program that goes
against the zeitgeist of their era yet stays connected to it by making
an effort to alter its outcomes. |
Akiko Numajiri, Colors 2006 (8”
x 6” x 10”, global paper products) |
Mitsuko Saito, Montauk at Dawn, 6:30
AM, April 2003, Montauk, New York, (51” x 32”,
Oil on Canvas) |
| Akiko Numajiri combines
recycled paper from all over the world to produce sculptures that
speak to contemporary cultural heterogeneity. With such as work is
Colors 2006 (8” x 6” x 10”, global paper
products) Numajiri investigates world wide preferences for packaging
colors, materials and media of heterogeneous populations such as that
of America. Coming from a homogeneous Japanese culture, Numajiri is
naturally interested in studying the differences or ‘otherness’
existing in societies that are multilayered. |
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Mitsuko Saito’s
work Montauk at Dawn, 6:30 AM, April 2003, Montauk, New
York, (51” x 32”, Oil on Canvas) was inspired by her
contact with a Montauk dawn and the colors of the sea and sky of
the surrounding area. The artist wanted to paint this scene at dawn
because she perceived the lively animation of life sandwiched between
heaven and earth. An accomplished painter who has shown both here
and in Japan, Saito’s engagement with Rothko’s style
holds similarities only on the surface. Saito’s visual language
expresses specificity, time, day, year-- unlike most of Rothko’s
works that were more general. |
Naoko Minegishi, I am wrapped,
I wrap (16” x 12.5”, to 18” x 21”,
oil on canvas or paper) |
Tsukushi Hibi, The
Tree of Life—Deko and Boko (Bumpiness) (17.7” x
8.9” each, mixed media) |
| An example is Naoko Minegishi’s
series entitled I am wrapped, I wrap (16” x 12.5”,
to 18” x 21”, oil on canvas or paper) with which she wanted
to express nostalgia. Her all embracing warmth is conveyed in rich
impastos of color and texture that recalls malleable layers of creaminess.
The subject can be read as a cushiony sofa chair in warm greens under-painted
with red alluding the Matissian metaphor for restfulness. This shape
is overlain at its top portion by a graffitoed circle containing broken
dashes that is painterly rather than linear thereby conveying mellowness. |
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Tsukushi Hibi engages
with the idea of the tree as a network of human life not literally,
but conceptually growing and shrinking, smooth and bumpy, square
and circular, that like human relationships meets and separates,
become entangled and then free from each other. Hibi’s series
The Tree of Life—Deko and Boko (Bumpiness) (17.7”
x 8.9” each, mixed media) expresses metamorphosis depicting
a semicircular shape that begins in a gray panel and continues in
the next red one gradually becoming a squared off form. Hibi’s
shapes constantly change from one panel to the next an element that
serves as catalyst maintaining tension between all 24 panels in
this series. |
Matsuno Moroi, Prehistoric
Organisms (From the Imaginary Scenery series) (21.9”
x 21” x 14.6”, mixed media) |
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Matsuno Moroi’s
sculptural installations ultimately strive for the origin of truth
with her works Prehistoric Organisms (From the Imaginary Scenery
series) (21.9” x 21” x 14.6”, mixed media)
as a stage in this process of discovering the source of life. Although
her search is about life’s origins her artistic vocabulary
varies and so does her context. Moroi uses Japanese paper that can
be shaped while damp according to her conception to become specific
pieces relating to their specific spatial topography and placement.
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Each of these women artists share a common language which
is abstract but in addition to this, through their works they evince a
desire to bring about a unity, wrapped in beauty that rather than being
convulsive is tranquil and fruitful.
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