Hiroko Yamaji 'Star'    26. Jan - 2. Mrz 2013

NANZUKA is pleased to present Star, the upcoming solo exhibition of works by Hiroko Yamaji. This will be the artist's debut gallery showing.

Hiroko Yamaji was born in Mie Prefecture in 1983 and completed a master's course in oil painting at Musashino Art University. Having exhibited at Art Award Tokyo (2008), Gunma Biennale for Young Artists (2008), and Tokozawa Biennale (2009, 2011), as well as with group shows VERLANGSAMTE PERFORMANCE (Van Horn, Duesseldorf) and Hiroko Yamaji, Stephan Ruderisch, Daniel Schubert (Galerie Gebr. Lehmann, Dresden) in Germany in 2012, Yamaji has steadily built a reputation both in Japan and abroad.

Through a process of effectively trimming away at common landscapes and motifs and then restructuring them in a rhythmical fashion, Yamaji creates striking imagery. Her abstract paintings, produced through the coinciding of a macroscopic field of view with a microscopic point of view, also amass together as a reservoir of dialogue taking place between Yamaji and her repeated subject matter.

At first glance, Yamaji's works appear abstract, yet the method of their execution is rather realistic. In her creative process, Yamaji places importance above all on the act of 'relentless looking'. She watches relentlessly, waiting for a natural surge of feelings, for figures to appear, for a melody to reach her ears. She waits for the moment she can catch what it is she absolutely wants to see. If asked to name a similar artist, the realist Paul Cézanne, who doubted even his own sense of vision, comes to mind. And yet there is no trace of doubt in Yamaji's art. It is not narrative that Yamaji seeks in her work, but truth. It is the fact of what exists between the works she creates and the new relationship born in the space between the artist, the art, and the viewer; the small motifs she finds; and the social issues mired in our consciousness.

Yamaji wants her paintings to go beyond any sort of thematic subject or meaning to become 'simply paint'. 'Through my painting, where it doesn't matter what exactly is being drawn, I want to liberate figural symbols from their role as symbols. To return to the beauty of paint itself - that is happiness' Yamaji explains, audaciously and crucially causing a stir in the tide of contemporary art.

For this exhibition, Yamaji will be showing seven new works created in 2012 following a solo show at her alma mater's exhibition space gFal and a three-month residency in Berlin. There will be an opening reception on 1/26 (Sat) starting at 18:00 with the artist in attendance.