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Email PageTadaaki Kuwayama: Paintings from the 70s
March 7, 2008- May 24, 2008
Tadaaki Kuwayama
Gary Snyder ProjectSpace
250 W 26th StTadaaki is speaking (a rare thing!) as a last minute event added to this week's Asian Contemporary Art Week 2008: Saturday, 3/22 at 2:30pm
Gary snyder Projectspace continues its focus on historically important art of the 1960s and 1970s with an exhibition of paintings from the 1970s by tadaaki kuwayama, whose work has been associated with minimalist and reductive painting since his first one-person shows at the seminal green gallery in 1961 and 1962. kuwayama was included in the 1966 Systemic Painting exhibition at the solomon r. guggenheim museum, and the 1979 Constructivism and the Geometric Tradition at the albright-knox.
Tadaaki Kuwayama was born in Nagoya, Japan, in 1932. he received his B.f.a. in 1956 from the tokyo National University of fine arts and music. in 1958 he moved to New York city, where he continues to live and work. retrospective exhibitions of kuwayama’s work are scheduled for 2010 at the tokyo contemporary art museum and the Nagoya city museum in Japan. for this exhibition, kuwayama has chosen eleven paintings from the 1970s and designed an exhibition to complement the modern design of the new Gary snyder Projectspace. the paintings shown will be illustrated along with installation photographs in the accompanying catalogue, which will include an essay by Peter frank.
In describing the work that will be in this exhibition, kuwayama states:
“In the mid 1960s and into the 1970s, I began to experiment with different materials in order to move away from more conventional notions of “painting”. I was attracted to industrial, metallic paint that I could spray, leaving no trace of a human touch. I wanted my art to be more artificial, less “organic”. And I used metal strips as part of the artwork, not just as a frame, to emphasize jointed panels. By embracing a more minimal use of color with only slight gradations, and by the repetition of panels, I was able to work with light and space to create specific environments…”
The importance of installation to kuwayama’s work was noted by robert c. morgan in a catalogue essay accompanying a 2003/2004 exhibition in tokyo:
“Kuwayama transforms the space through the repetition of modular elements and offers a completely new syntax to the way a space is normally perceived, both physically and conceptually. This was made evident in his recent site specific installations at the Chiba City and Kawamura Memorial Museums in Japan in 1996. Although different elements were employed in either case, using different sizes and modular shapes, fabricated in synthetic Bakelite or constructed in mylar, glass, and aluminum, the emphasis was not on the “sculpture” but on the transformation of the space through the use of modular elements and the concept of disappearance in relation to the repetition and placement of the elements. In a Kuwayama installation, the space becomes the object through this process of reversal. The materials are simply the vehicles in order to make their passage into the reality of a new kind of space, to bring space into being—which is close to the practice of the great fifteenth century Japanese landscape painter Sesshu.”
Tadaaki Kuwayama: Paintings from the 1970s at Gary snyder Projectspace will be complemented by an installation of kuwayama’s more recent work at Bjorn ressle gallery at 16 east 79th street, New York city, which opens march 12th and runs through april 19th (www.ressleart.com).
Books and DVDs related to artists in this show
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