November 9th Tue. 〜 27th Sat. 2021
12:00〜18:00 Monday Closed
Artworks are mainly expressed in terms of meaning and form.
My early three-dimensional works in the 1980s expressed form in abstraction, and my paintings from the 1990s expressed meaning in figuration.
Because I concentrated on painting for 30 years, I was able to recognize time and space beyond abstraction and figuration, and I realized that the materials for three-dimensional works, which I had resisted for so long, would dissolve well in the values that I derived from confronting paintings, such as the lightness of space, the sky, the universe, and the inner world of my brain. And I felt ready to challenge Drawing Sculpture again.
Yoshio KITAYAMA
Three-dimensional works by Yoshio KITAYAMA
In the 1970s, I saw Kitayama’s works at independents exhibitions and group exhibitions, but that did not make a strong impression on me.
Around the end of the ’70s, however, the New Wave began to flourish in the art world into my eyes, had seen an ascetic expression of the ’70s, I thought simply a glamorous era had arrived.
Understanding such background of the art movement, I astonishing by the high quality of Kitayama’s works, which he expressed freely and openly using bamboo branches, tree branches, Japanese paper, and colors as materials. His fascinating works leads to his solo exhibition at galerie 16 in 1981.
The following year, in 1982, Kitayama had the opportunity to exhibit his work at the Venice Biennale in Italy also Carnegie International in the U.S., both are major international exhibitions, and his reputation was established firmly. After that, the number of shows increased exponentially, and I think he did a great job of putting himself in the middle of the tremendous response for about ten years.
In the ’90s, he shifted to painting, he had always been strongly interested in.
For more information on this process and his paintings, please refer to the reviews in the catalogs of his exhibitions held at museums in the past.
He has been involved in paintings for 30 years, and of course, it is still ongoing, but now, for the first time in 40 years, he will show a new three-dimensional work (which he calls Drawing Sculpture) that made him famous.
galerie16 Michiko INOUE
[Biography]
1948 Born in Shiga.
1983 “The 2nd Asian Art Biennale Bangladesh” Gold Medal Prize.
1985 Received an International Visitors Program grant from USIS (The Department of State, USA).
1992 Japan Arts Grand Prix from the Shincho Foundation.
2011 “Kyoto Prefecture Cultural Contribution Award”.
[Selected Exhibitions]
1979 “The 14th Contemporary Art Exhibition of Japan” Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum
1982 “The 40th Venice Biennale” Venice
1982 “Carnegie International” Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh
1983 “Five Contemporary Japanese Artists” Kunst Halle, Düsseldorf
1988 Kunst der Gegenwart Berlin-Tokyo Gderier tauschen iher Künstler aus Galerie pels Leusden, Berlin
1993 “Contemporary Artists Series ’93” Kanagawa Prefectural Gallery
2000 “Echigo Tsumari Art Triennale 2000” Niigata
2001 “Think About The Life—Yoshio Kitayama and Junior High School Students”Itami City Museum of Art
2010 “Setouchi Triennale” Ogijima, Kagawa Prefecture
2019 “Yoshio Kitayama ‘Jiken”‘ MEM Gallery Tokyo
[Selected Public Collections]
Toyota Municipal Museum of Art
Ohara Museum of Art
Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art
Aichi Arts Center
The National Museum of Art, Osaka
Suntory Museum of Art
Mie Center for the Arts
Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi
Kanagawa Kenmin Hall Gallery
Takamatsu Art Museum
The Museum of Modern Art, Shiga
Sogetsu Museum of Art, Tokyo
The Museum of Modern Art, Wakayama
Higashiomi City Tenbin no Sato Cultural Learning Center
Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art
Fukuoka Art Museum
Nagoya City Art Museum
Hokkaido Asahikawa
Museum of Art
