「TARTANS」
Nov. 15th tue– Nov. 26th Sat, 2022
12:00~18:00 Monday closed
The TARTANS series, which KISHIDA Nagako has been working on since 2010, consists of tartan plaid patterns selected from an illustrated book published in the United Kingdom, enlarged 12 times in height and width, and copied in oil paint on a canvas （canvas size:145.5 × 97.0cm）.
The TARTANS series, which has been ongoing from 2010 to the present, combined with the fact that the subjects were painted without any arrangement, her works will be reminded of the paintings of Jasper Johns, especially in his early years.
As is well known, Jones opened up the painting possibilities different from the Abstract Expressionism that dominated the USA at the time by using existing designs and symbols such as the stars and stripes, numbers, and targets as his subjects.
In an interview with Leo Steinberg, he stated that he chose these motifs, not because of a subjective liking of the subjects themselves, but because he “just liked that they were there” (Steinberg, “Other Criteria” ).
What is groundbreaking about Jones’s statement is that it shifts the act of drawing from the action of drawings an object based on some subjective and subjective value judgment to drawing the object “just being there” without such a value judgment.
It is not much difficult to detect the impact of the change as mentioned above in Jones’ attitude toward the TARTANS series. Jones’ attitude can be seen not only in the action of duplicate＝transcribe existing patterns and symbols into the paintings but also in the circumstances surrounding the beginning of this series.
She says that the collection of illustrations that she refers to in the TARTANS series would not have originally been bought for this purpose. And is a catalyst for beginning the TARTANS series because it became difficult for various reasons to continue with the ‘Blank Map’ series she had been working on before.
The TARTANS series began when a collection of illustrations “just happened to be there” in the overlap of the above circumstances, which clearly shows that Kishida’s consistent interest in things that “just happened to be there”, beyond the means or medium of expression, is the basis of her creative work.
In other words, what Jones develops in painting, Kishida develops in a way that is not limited to the painting, develops in a phase in which painting is also included. What makes such development make possible is her unique consideration of the ‘names’ of things.
From the end of the 1970s to the 1990s, Kishida produced works on the subject of the names of things. These included ‘A, B, C Star Books’ (1979), a collection of 26 books containing portraits of actors and actresses arranged in ABC order; ‘MENU’ (1982), a book containing rearranged lists of menus from her collection of Japanese, Western and Chinese restaurants; ‘Place Names of Residence (1984), a collection of cards containing the names of new towns in various parts of Japan ‘’and ‘Names of Diseases’ (1996), a collection of names of diseases from medical books. What is characteristic of these works is that she treats the names not as something tied to a thing, but as something that was just there. By treating names as independent of things, it is possible to deal with a world made up of things independently of the feelings, sensations, and value judgments of the person dealing with them. This attitude towards the world is indicated by Kishida’s enigmatic like aphorism: “To collect names is to exempt existence, and the exemptions of existence are words” (from the “Language/ Names” exhibition (1996), Statements).
Such an idea will be the underlying principle of the TARTANS series.
As in recent years, exhibiting two series of works that will feature new work from the ‘TARTANS’ series and re-exhibition works from ‘INDEX’, based on the concept mentioned above (‘Name of Disease’ (1996) will be re-exhibited in this exhibition). By looking at the TARTANS series, is a group of works with names that do not immediately suggest a design. And by looking at the Names of Diseases, a group of works on the theme of names themselves, which increase and decrease with the development of medicine and social change, in parallel, we can catch a glimpse of Kishida’s practice based on consistent and deep consideration of words and objects.
MAEDA Yuya (Beholder)
Nagako KISHIDA
1949 Born in Yamaguchi
1974 Graduated from Kyoto University of Education
Major : Painting
▶︎One person shows
1977 <Catalog>
1978 <Picture Book of Bird>
1979 <A・B・C Star Books>
1980 <Collect>
1981 <Phone Books>
1982 <MENU>
1983 <Weather Forecast>
1984 <Place Names of Residence>
1986 <Names of Goods ;Game of Aphasia Syndrome>
1987 <Japanese Dictionary>
1988 <World Atlas>
1989 <Dictionary of Loan-words>
1990 <Usual Conversations>
1991 <Blank Map,1991>
1992 <Blank Map,1992>
1993 <Blank Map,1993>
1994 <Blank Map,1994>
1995 <Blank Map,1995>
1996 <Language/Name>
1997 <Fragment/Blank Map,1997>
1998 <Fragment/Blank Map,1998>
1999 <Fragment/Blank Map,1999>
2000 <Fragment/Blank Map,2000>
2001 <Fragment/Blank Map,2001>
2002 <Fragment/Blank Map,2002>
2003 <Fragment/Blank Map,2003>
2004 <Fragment/Blank Map,2004>
2005 <Fragment/Blank Map,2005>
2006 Fragment/Plant<1Fukakusa-Fujinomori-cho,Fushimi-ku,Kyoto>
2007 <Fragment/Blank Map,2007>
2008 <Fragment/Blank Map,2008>
2009 <Fragment/Blank Map,2009>
2010 <TARTANS>
2011 <TARTANS>
2012 <TARTANS>
2013 <TARTANS>
2014 <TARTANS>
2016 <TARTANS>
2017 <TARTANS>
2018 <TARTANS>
2019 <TARTANS>
2020 <TARTANS>
2021 <TARTANS>
2022 <TARTANS>
All the solo shows were held at Galerie 16、Kyoto
▶︎Group shows/Current shows
1983 <ARTIST` BOOKS> Gallery Lunami ,Tokyo, traveled to galleries and libraries in Japan.
1996 THE INTERNATIONAL LIBRARY a project by artist HELMUT LOHR Art Museum:
UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA
2002 THE BOOK/KANSYOSYUKAN Galerie 16、 Kyoto
2005 ”Fragment as a method/reading again, blank maps“KISHIDA Nagako
CASO Contemporary Art Space Osaka
2006 Printed Matters 2006 Artists‘Book Tokyo Publishing House, Tokyo
2007 “Map is Map” CASO Contemporary Art Space Osaka
2013 “Fuji Xerox Print Collection KISHIDA Nagako”Fuji Xerox Art Space YOKOHAMA
2015 “Fuji Xerox Print Collection Step of the print collection Ⅲ The times of the copy art”Fuji Xerox Art Space YOKOHAMA
2016 “ Artist㏌ the Age of Mechanical Reproduction‐From Picasso to Warhol
Fuji Xerox Print Collection × Yokohama Museum of Art”
Yokohama Museum Yokohama
2016 KISHIDA NAGAKO 《Weather Forecast》《Blank Map》Tokyo Publishing House
Tokyo
