《'77-X》colored felt-pen on photographKazuyo Kinoshita (1939-1994) is an artist who made a striking impression on postwar Japanese art, through photography and painting as her main media. Kinoshita’s background of creation can be traced to a wide range of movements during the first two decades after World WarⅡ, such as Gutai, Mono-ha, High Red Center and Neo-Dada in Kansai area. She has also go along with an artist group called “i” in Kobe around her first solo exhibition. However, that she did not always follow the movements should be specially mentioned when the relevance between female artist and the art movements of that time is concerned.
Kazuyo Kinoshita was born in Kobe, Hyogo Prefecture in 1939. From 1973 to 1980, she applied a sort of electric reproduction technology called “Xerography” (blueprint) in her works and requestioned the existence of human’s consciousness through her creation. In order to accomplish the works, the artist took pictures of papery objects which had been drawn, folded or warped by herself, and then depicted planar image of the same line or circle with the image in the objects on photographs. The unique dual structure, the superposition of two-dimensional image and three-dimensional image, of digital and analogue, creates the visual /cognitive divergence between certainty and uncertainty of “existence”. The divergence triggers the people who “sees” to ponder the question of “What is the existence” and the behavior of “see”. The question toward “see” in the works of Kinoshita can also be considered as the verification of the way “I” take part in the world.
Kinoshita began to think it impossible to make the satisfactory explanation about the “being” itself by juxtaposing things in order to relate themselves, or even weak to reason the self-being. From 1982, she started new attempt on painting with her creative attitude. A strong concern to sensibility basing on physicality can be found in the strokes and colors conveyed by hand’s acting paths in her paintings. In her oil paintings of later years, she introduced a technique into her creation- daubing in the canvas with pigment and wiping out with cloth afterwards. The stroke of daubing and the vestige of wiping render a kind of tension to texture of painting and exhibition space. Daubing and wiping out pigment can be considered to confirm the existence of the action and the artist who was making the action. In the other hand, the technique can also be regarded as the disconfirm to the artist’s action or the existence of the works. For creating the artwork, the action of daubing and wiping out are behaved and show correspondent value with the very existence of the work. Kinoshita has succeeded in transforming the contradictory into the evidence showing essential and correspondent value for the creation of existence.
This exhibition introduces an artist who had been striving to elevate some part of herself to open “consciousness” – “eye”. She had kept trying to eliminate the barrier between subject and object, integrate the existence with the behavior of observing it. Perhaps we could acquire an exciting experience of vibrating the cognition and sensibility through observing Kinoshita’s firm volition. The artworks by Kinoshita are being profoundly revalued in recent years and it would be our great honor to have your appreciation.
【Selected solo Exhibitions】
1966First solo exhibition at Wiener Gallery, Kobe
1972Kazuyo Kinoshita, galerie16, Kyoto
1974Kazuyo Kinoshita, Muramatsu Gallery, Tokyo
1981Kazuyo Kinoshita: 1976-1980, Heidelberger Kunstverein, West Germany
1991Kazuyo Kinoshita : Reality and Recognition...And to another reality, galerie16,Kyoto
2016Kazuyo Kinoshita: From "Message for Existence" to "Creation of Existence Itself", Gallery Shimada, Kobe
2017Art Basel HongKong, Gallery Yamaki Fine Art booth, HongKong
2017Kazuyo KINOSHITA ”Another Existence" Gallery Yamaki Fine Art , Kobe
2018Frieze New York, Gallery Yamaki Fine Art booth, USA
2024KAZUYO MISHIMA: Retrospective Nakanoshima Museum of Art OSAKA（Osaka）
【Selected Group Exhibitions】
1963Kyoto Independents Exhibition, Kyoto Municipal Museum of Fine Arts, Kyoto（-1985）
197713th Contemporary Art Exhibition of Japan, Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum and Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art, Kyoto
1983Photography in Contemporary Art -Featuring Art from the 70's-. ,The National Museum of Modern Art,Tokyo/The National Museum of Modern Art,Kyoto
1984International Experimental Art Exhibition ,Petofi Osarnok,Budapest, Hungary
1989Das Foto als autonomes Bild Experimentelle Gestaltung 1839-1989, Bielefeld, Munich, West Germany
1997The recommendation of “I" art – Why “WATAKUSHI" was drawn, Itabashi Art Museum, Tokyo
2012Artistic interactions: avant-garde Kansai' Otani Memorial Museum of Art, Nishinomiya, Hyogo
2015For a New World to Come: Experiments in Japanese Art and Photography, 1968 – 1979, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, travelled to Japan Society, New York and Grey Art Gallery, New York University, U.S.A.
2018ART FAIR TOKYO 2018 (Gallery Yamaki Fine Art booth)
2019The rivalry of Yoshimi Okada and Kazuyo Kinoshita, Gallery Shimada, Kobe
2019Taipei Dangdai Art&Id, Gallery Yamaki Fine Art booth, Taiwan
2020CADAN: Gendai Bijutsu 2020 (Gallery Yamaki Fine Art booth)
2021Metamorphosis and Evolution, emmy art + (Tokyo)
2022GYFA Show II "Post-war Female Artists," Gallery Yamaki Fine Art (Kobe)
2022Mori no Iro, Gallery Yamaki Fine Art (Kobe)
2023Taipei Dangdai Art&Id, Gallery Yamaki Fine Art booth, Taiwan
【Awards】
1977Awarded the prize of Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Modern Art at 13th Contemporary Art Exhibition of Japan, Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, Tokyo Japan
【Artist Information】
Kazuyo KINOSHITA
SessionSat. Jun 17, 2017 - Sat. Jul 8, 2017 Closed on Sundays and Mondays
Hours11:00－13:00 / 14:00－19:00
PlaceGallery Yamaki Fine Art
Venue3-9-5-2F Motomachi, Chuo-ku, Kobe 650-0022
ContactTEL: 078-391-1666 FAX : 078-391-1667 MAIL: info@gyfa.co.jp
AccessOne minute walk from Motomachi Station, West exit (JR/ Hanshin Line)
ChargeFree
