artKYOTO 2023｜MEGUMI OGITA GALLERY

Dates

October 6 12pm-7pm
October 8 12pm-7pm
October 9 11am-4pm
*Private view to be held on October 5 and 7

Contact

Former Imperial Villa Nijo-jo Castle
Booth D16
541 Nijojo-cho, Nijo-dori Horikawa Nishi iru, Nakagyo-ku, Kyoto 604-8301 Japan

artKYOTO 2023

Katsuaki Shigeno

Yoshimasa Tsuchiya
Fukuo Tanaka

Gary Baseman

Karim Hamid

Katsuaki Shigeno completed his postgraduate studies in printmaking at Tokyo University of the Arts in 2003. Since then, he has exhibited a wide range of works, mainly copper prints, but also ceramics, oil, watercolour and ink, and has attracted attention from book illustration and stage art as well. In Shigeno's works, in which he freely manipulates a wide variety of techniques, all boundaries between illusion and reality, present and past, are removed and the audience's eye is focused on the moment that is happening there. Shigeno creates full of rich and nostalgic atmospheres, despite being casual scenes of people at the dinner table or taking a walk. Meanwhile, there is also a sense of reality in imaginary cityscapes, showing the artist's rare talent for recognising the world and incorporating it into his work. Romanticism, which for Shigeno is a faint desire or escapism, is blended into longing and humour, as well as sadness of being torn by the contradiction between the two.

Katsuaki Shigeno, Eros Reversed: Omotenashi, 2019, 9 x 16.5 x 12.2 cm, Ceramic

Yoshimasa Tsuchiya was born in 1977 and specialised in sculpture at Tokyo University of the Arts, and completed PhD, Sculpture Conservation there in 2007. Tsuchiya has established the unique painting method, in which light colours appear faintly inside from the white surface of wood carving. He also uses techniques used in Buddhist statues, whereby the head is split open and stone or glass eyes are inserted, to create works with a mysterious look. The glass eye is produced by artist Fukuo Tanaka. At first glance, the works are instantly recognisable as Tsuchiya's, and can be described as ‘the latest classics’ with timeless originality and the power to appeal to both the present and the future. Tsuchiya's motifs are animals as symbols, which embody intangible ideas in the shape of living creatures. The images of animals that appear in myths and tales are the origin of his ideas, and the creatures born from them have repeatedly mutated and cross-bred, taking the inspiration from improved garden plants and ornamental fish, and have developed into a variety of forms.

Yoshimasa Tsuchiya, Deer, 2023, 57.5 x 52 x 17 cm, Painted camphor wood, crystal

Fukuo Tanaka, who creates works using heat-resistant glass with high transparency called borosilicate glass, studied at an art school and now presents works under his own brand ‘Topnoch’. He is in charge of creating staring glass eyes with the white, irises and pupils for Yoshimasa Tsuchiya’s wood carvings, as we saw at Tsuchiya’s exhibition ‘Phylogenesis’ in 2022. Tanaka, who has pursued the characteristics of borosilicate glass, freely creates dainty and delicate works with the distinctive technique called ‘inside-out’. He uses a burner to heat another glass, that is dotted on the outside of glass rod, and change it into various patterns as it melts and goes inside. Then he creates what he imagines and shapes the whole at the same time. The unique colours are created by intricate layers of various glass and vaporised metals such as pure gold and silver. The works are reminiscent of natural and universal beauty, such as snow crystals, leaf veins, which exist in the world according to certain rules without human hands.

Fukuo Tanaka, Selfish-05 【Yourself】, 2023, 40 x 12 x 12 cm, Borosilicate glass, beeswax on walnut

Gary Baseman is an interdisciplinary artist who investigates history, heritage, and the human condition (especially love, longing, and loss). Through unique iconography and fantastical visual narratives that celebrate ‘the beauty of the bittersweetness of life,’ his work brings together the worlds of popular culture and fine art. Baseman (b. 1960) was born and raised in Los Angeles, California when lifestyles dramatically shifted and politics and popular culture seeped into the home. The influence of media and Hollywood, blended with LA’s influential art scene, led to how Baseman would perceive and produce art. Baseman witnessed how artists challenged traditional art practices and crossed boundaries, and would later coin the term ‘Pervasive Art’ to reflect his multifaceted creative output much like his predecessors and admired artists who also resisted the confines of media, styles, purposes, and audiences. Baseman transforms everyday observations and experiences into art that includes drawing, painting, photography, video, installation art, performance, as well as fashion, toy design and social media.

Gary Baseman, Il Cenacolo, 2012, 91.7 x 122 cm, Acrylic on canvas (framed)

Karim Hamid was born in Los Angeles, California in 1966, studied at the Royal Academy of Arts in the UK, then received his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1994, and now lives and works in Colorado. He has had numerous solo and group exhibitions in Europe and the US, and his first solo exhibition in Japan, ‘Upon The End of Play and Infancy’, was held at MEGUMI OGITA GALLERY in 2023. The constant idealisation and consumption of the female body, from classical art history to contemporary popular culture, has been a consistent theme in Hamid's work. Referencing a variety of sources, he focuses on what the male gaze signifies by depicting distorted and exaggerated images of women. The seemingly inefficient process of deconstruction and construction, painting and erasing repeatedly, gives his work a sense of ‘time and space’, and leaves room for interpretation.

Karim Hamid, ffa.fn66 (Visitation), 2023, 122 x 122 cm, Mixed media, oil and acrylic paint on wood panel