
|
All rights reserved ©SunStormArts Pub. Co Inc. Visit us at Fineartmagazine.com twitter.com/fineartmagazine & facebook.com/fineartmagazine We use cookies to personalise content and ads, to provide social media features and to analyse our traffic. We also share information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising and analytics partners. See details: https://support.google.com/blogger/answer/6253244?p=eu_cookies_notice&hl=en&rd=1

|
|
|
KAZUNORI HAMANA, YUJI UEDA, and OTANI WORKSHOP
Curated by Takashi Murakami
Blum & Poe, New York
March 3 – April 9, 2016
Opening reception: Thursday, March 3, 6 – 8pm
|
|
New York, NY (February 25, 2016)—Blum & Poe is pleased to present an exhibition of Japanese ceramics featuring the work of Kazunori Hamana, Yuji Ueda, and Otani Workshop — organized and curated by Takashi Murakami.
For this exhibition, Takashi Murakami assembles a new generation of Japanese ceramicists whose unique pottery methods merge a respect for lineage with improvisation, experimentation, and refinement. As with the artists’ previous exhibition at Blum & Poe Los Angeles (September 2015) — Hamana, Ueda, and Otani bring their unique wares and collective imagination to the New York gallery space to create a lucid and otherworldly environment. Central to both the artists' practices and lifestyles, an emphasis on the integrity of natural objects and processes drives this presentation of anthropomorphic clay forms; asymmetrical vessels; and singed, crackling, glazed surfaces. Locally harvested clays are shaped sometimes over the span of many days; mixed with experimental materials to produce unique effects; glazes formed with combinations of metals, ash, and wood; pieces baked in subterranean or above-ground wood-fired kilns.
This display of ceramics is an illumination of age-old traditions being expanded into the 21st century. Informed by and in conceptual counter to elements of contemporary pop culture, mass production and mass consumption, Kazunori Hamana, for example, creates large ceramic vessels without immediately perceivable use, working without tools and without haste. Many of the works in the exhibition by these three young artists have never been seen before in the United States.
Kazunori Hamana makes ceramics on the pacific coast, in Chiba, Japan. The work is both stark and full of personality, and oftentimes the surfaces are striped or imbued with designs or language. Urns, bowls, vessels, cups, and plates — each irregularly shaped by not only the vast history of the ceramic arts, but also by the characteristics — are found in the coastal environment where he works.
Yuji Ueda comes from a family of award-winning tea farmers in the Shiga Prefecture town of Shigaraki. His experimental approach to glazing and firing leads to a variety of distinct forms and vessels. Working both in intimate sizes and in larger scales, Ueda’s alien surfaces and fragile textures are both tolerant and unyielding.
Otani Workshop is also based in Shigaraki — one of the great centers of Japanese ceramics for the last 800 years. In addition to clay, Otani works with wood, iron, and other materials. His small jars, vases, and other sculptural forms depicting figures and faces are characteristic of the many styles and motifs found throughout Japanese culture.
Image: Kazunori Hamana, Untitled, c. 2015, Ceramic, 7 1/2 x 8 7/8 x 9 inches, © the artist. Photo: Toru Kometani. Courtesy of the artist and Blum & Poe, Los Angeles/New York/Tokyo
Locations
Blum & Poe, New York, 19 East 66th Street, New York, NY 10065
Blum & Poe, Los Angeles, 2727 S. La Cienega Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90034
Blum & Poe, Tokyo, 1-14-34 Jingumaeshibuya, Tokyo, 150-0001
Concurrently on view
Blum & Poe, Los Angeles, through March 12, Dansaekhwa and Minimalism
Blum & Poe, Tokyo, through March 5, Matt Saunders: Two Worlds
Hours
Los Angeles, Tuesday – Saturday, 10am–6pm
New York, Monday – Friday, 10am–6pm
Tokyo, Tuesday – Saturday, 11am–7pm
#fineartmagazine
|
|


|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
TOMIE OHTAKE
March 2 – April 2, 2016
Opening Reception
March 2, 6PM – 8PM
|
|
New York, NY (February 22, 2016)—Tina Kim Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition of work by Japanese-Brazilian artist Tomie Ohtake, a central figure in the history of Brazilian abstraction. From her first publically exhibited works in the mid-1950s until her death in 2015, Ohtake's dedicated exploration of the formal, temporal, and, arguably, spiritual aspects of color, shape, and gesture has resulted in an extraordinary deep catalogue of work that has too rarely been seen outside of Latin America. On view from March 2 – April 2, 2016, this exhibition is the artist's first in the United States in over 20 years, providing a broad view of the nuanced practice of this master of pictorial space and form.
One of the leading proponents of a painting style that privileged a gestural, informal approach, Ohtake departed from the dominant strain of concrete, geometric abstraction that was strongly associated with international movements of the earlier 20th Century in Brazil and beyond. After moving from her birthplace of Kyoto to Brazil in 1936, she became closely associated with the Seibi group, an informal network of Japanese-Brazilian artists united by an interest in abstraction. Yet she was also connected to wider groups of critics and artists, including Willys de Castro, Mário Pedrosa, Paulo Herkenhoff, and Mira Schendel among others. Her multiple affiliations and connections freed her from alignment with any one particular approach to art making and positioned her on a relatively singular artistic path.
Ohtake’s formal economy is remarkable — everything is exactly as it needed to be, no more or no less. Above all, her work is united by an inquisitive and experimental spirit that ultimately focuses on the experience of the work itself, both for the maker and for the viewer. Her paintings, even the geometrically inflected ones, always retain a fundamental interest in atmosphere and its effects. To retain a clear focus on the experience of the work in and of itself, Ohtake eschews metaphor and specific material references to such a degree that every one of her works is untitled. Her process was always evolving, but consistently deliberate, thoughtful and specific throughout her career.
To trace this evolution, Tina Kim Gallery’s exhibition includes work from an active fifty-year span of Ohtake's career, from 1956-2010. The chronology begins with compositions from the mid-1950s that demonstrate the origins of her sensitivity to color and strong formal composition that exist throughout her years of work. In her pieces from the late 1950s, we see the brushstrokes loosening and forms getting more ethereal. During this same time period, Ohtake began experimenting with "blind paintings" in which she painted blindfolded in order to free her artistic process from the strictures of vision. The resulting works are haunting and expressive, seeming to coalesce in momentary formations before becoming something else. Following this series, her work then returns to more specifically structured and geometrically focused compositions. Indeed, in the late 1960s, she begins to play with printmaking, creating bold and expressly graphic works that skillfully take advantage of the medium, clarifying new formal concerns that will translate into her paintings of the period and broaden her experimentation with color.
In the centralized, delineated forms and surfaces of a selection of paintings from the late 1970s and 1980s, one can trace motifs and spatial relationships that reappear throughout her oeuvre — circles, ovals, arcs, mounds, in tones both earthly and vibrant. The surfaces become increasingly complex, layered and active, and careful viewing reveals layer upon layer of paint that cumulatively builds a remarkable depth of hue. In the most recent paintings on view, Ohtake clarifies her geometric and color concerns even further, tightening compositions and activating surfaces in works that invite contemplation and immersion into the logic of her work.
ABOUT TOMIE OHTAKE
Tomie Ohtake was born in Kyoto, Japan in 1913 and lived in São Paulo, Brazil from 1936 until her death in early 2015. She began working as an artist professionally only in her late 30s, immersing herself in an exploration of abstraction first in paint, and expanding into printmaking and sculpture in later years. Throughout her long and prolific career, she was the subject of numerous solo exhibitions, including several at Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo since her first in 1957; major exhibitions at the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; Barbican Centre, London; The Museum of Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro; and a retrospective at the Instituto Tomie Ohtake in São Paulo upon the occasion of her 100th birthday, among many others. She has participated in numerous international biennial exhibitions, including Venice, Havana, Cuenca and eight iterations of the São Paulo Bienal. Since the 1980s, Ohtake has produced several major public sculptures for cities and towns all across Brazil, including iconic pieces throughout her hometown of São Paulo like the murals adorning the Consolacao stop of the Metro. In 2001, Instituto Tomie Ohtake opened its doors in São Paulo with a program dedicated to illuminating contemporary art since the 1950s and preserving the legacy of Tomie Ohtake.
ABOUT TINA KIM GALLERY
Founded in 2001, Tina Kim Gallery annually participates in more than twelve international fairs and is devoted to showcasing contemporary art. The gallery is affiliated with Kukje in Seoul, South Korea, regularly collaborating on exhibitions that feature both emerging and internationally renowned artists. Tina Kim Gallery also works closely with Vintage 20, a private dealer specializing in mid-century furniture and design.
Tina Kim Gallery is open Tuesday – Saturday 10 AM – 6 PM
Connect with the gallery on Instagram | Facebook | Twitter and visit tinakimgallery.com
Image: Tomie Ohtake, Untitled, 1980. Oil on canvas 39.37 x 39.37 inches (100 x 100 cm). Image courtesy of Everton Ballardin © Galeria Nara Roesler
#fineartmagazine |
|