Galerie Kashya Hildebrand is pleased to present the works of eight young Japanese artists from Kyoto showing for the first time in Switzerland. Curator and Kyoto-based artist Kohei Nawa has put together an exciting group show with artists of his generation offering new ways of expressing and seeing abstraction.
Kohei Nawa describes the exhibited works as a kind of “infusion, transformation of ordinary sensations, desires, and stories, which are filtered by [the artist’s] unique sensitivity.” A common denominator for many of these art works is their inspiration from the artists’ immediate surroundings especially the ephemeral and fleeting aspects of nature and life. Applying various materials and techniques, the artists look for ways of depicting natural phenomena without any romantic pathos, to grasp the invisible, to give form to the ephemeral. The artists address not only questions of perceptions of reality and existence but also of the limits of visual concepts of space and the void.
Taking a deliberate distance from the world of global media and consumer culture the artists of this group show have found and developed their artistic expression in Kyoto, far removed from any trends. This sets them apart from many other well-known contemporary Japanese artists who left for the United States or Europe during the economic crisis in the 1990s.
Some have criticized the generation of artists presented in this show for not being political enough. Instead of producing work with overt socio-political content and statements many of these artists preferred to simply react to what they felt relevant by eliminating politics entirely from their artistic expressions and draw their inspiration from very different sources and themes. This is also reflected in SENJIRU, where the works represented captivate and mesmerize the viewer by offering intimate access to seemingly trivial everyday phenomena.
The curator and artist Kohei Nawa and the artists Yu Kawakita, Nao Matsumoto, and Nobuhiro Nakanishi will be present at the opening reception.
Opening Reception:
Thursday, 12 June 2008, 6-8 pm |
