Kazuyo Kinoshita, '77-A, 1977, Color felt-pen on photograph, 71.6 × 102 cmSat. Sep 7, 2024 – Sat. Oct 12, 2024
Gallery Yamaki Fine Art is pleased to present a solo exhibition, Kazuyo Kinoshita Part II – Playback -, from Sat, September 7 to Sat, October 12, 2024. Kazuyo Kinoshita (1939-1994) was an artist who left a strong impression on Japan’s postwar art, mainly through photography and painting. On the 30th anniversary of her death, the first large-scale retrospective exhibition after her passing was organized at the Nakanoshima Museum of Art, Osaka, and the Museum of Modern Art, Saitama, and her unique artistic practice is once again attracting public attention. The background of Kinoshita’s work can be traced back to the postwar period of 20 years in the Kansai region, which saw the emergence of numerous groups such as Gutai and Mono-ha, as well as the Hi Red Center and Neo-Dada that emerged in Tokyo in the 1960s. Kinoshita worked with the avant-garde art collective Group “i” formed in Kobe before and after her first solo exhibition. However, it should be mentioned that she did not necessarily follow in their footsteps when considering the relationship of female artists to the art movement of the time.
Kazuyo Kinoshita was born in Kobe, Hyogo in 1939. From around 1973 to 1980, she employed an electronic reproduction technology called xerography (blueprint photography) to create works that question the nature of human perception. For this body of work, Kinoshita photographed a piece of paper with a figure drawn on it, which was deformed by folding and distorting, and then she further drew a plane figure of the same line or circle on top of the image. What arises from this distinctive dual structure, the overlap of the three-dimensional image and the two-dimensional image, the digital and the analog, is a visual and cognitive misalignment that embodies the certainty or ambiguity of “existence.” This disparity induces those who “see” to ask the profound question, “What is existence?” and makes us muse upon the act of “seeing.” Kinoshita’s work examines “seeing,” and it can be described as an identification of how “I” am involved in the world.
Around 1982, She began working on new paintings while continuing her unique approach to creation after Kinoshita started to feel that the relative understanding of things by juxtaposing one thing against another could not explain the existence of “being” itself, and even the ground of her own existence was becoming less and less clear. The brushstrokes and colors in Kinoshita’s paintings convey the trajectory of her hand movements, revealing her deep interest in sensibilities based on her physicality. In the oil paintings of her later years, she added the process of rubbing and wiping with a cloth after applying paint. The brushstrokes and the traces of the wipes, which emphasize movement, provide the paintings with tension and resonance between the pictorial surface and the exhibition space. Applying and wiping off paint can be seen as proof or declaration of the existence of the movement itself and the painter who executes, while at the same time denying the existence of the painter’s movement and the work. These two movements are necessary and equally valuable actions to create the work’s very existence. Kinoshita successfully represents both, which possess conflicting meanings, as essential and equally important traces of the creation of “existence.”
In this exhibition, we look back on the creative journey of Kazuyo Kinoshita, featuring her xerographic works from the 1970s, valuable works from the 1980s that show the transition to painting, and representative pieces from her later years in the 1990s, when she reached her own unique style of painting. We hope you will visit and enjoy Kinoshita’s works at this exhibit.
Related Exhibition:
Kazuyo Kinoshita A Retrospective
The Museum of Modern Art, Saitama 10/12/2024 – 1/13/2025
【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
SessionWed. Sep 11, 2024 - Sat. Oct 12, 2024 Closed on Sundays and Mondays
Hours11:00－13:00 / 14:00－19:00 [-17:00 on the last day]
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
