Cooperation : BASE GALLERY, HAGIWARA PROJECTS

Maki Fine Arts is celebrating its 5th anniversary. This would have not been possible without the support and cooperation by our generous patrons like you. To commemorate the occasion, our gallery will present discreet abstraction, a group show curated by artist Fuminao Suenaga starting Saturday, October 31, 2015.

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discreet abstraction
Fuminao Suenaga

What I'd like to see are works that have slipped past and moved ahead of the memories of existing work or the familiar visual sensation from our daily lives. Some may question the purpose of creating anew when our world is already full of nice/beautiful art work, but those existing works were created under a different visual world, where internet, digital photos, and low-cost reproduction technologies did not exist. Thus, there is significance in first digesting today's visual experience and then linking it to the endeavor called production. From there, beauty--independent from the already existing--shall emerge. This is not about linking the style you possess by happenstance to an existing work or about sharing a sense of time through direct communication. Rather, it is something you finally discover only after noticing the distance and fully digesting the difference. To express this possibility, I have entitled this show discreet abstraction.

When abstraction emerged, it was realized as something asymmetrical, and for nearly half a century, it has evolved as an art form that represents nothing or as a genre having autonomy issues. My thinking is that it had significance not because it lacked symmetry, but because it slipped past the pictorial and sculptural visions and introduced a chasm. Abstraction occurs regardless of the presence of asymmetry. The fact that Paul Klee's works, with titles indicating concrete motifs and with linkage to the images, are recognized to represent abstraction even in the early years of abstract painting history appears to support this point.

Most works shown by the artists participating in discreet abstraction possess concrete motifs and have been built by replication, but the works can be considered abstraction because the resulting impression I get is abstract. Kota Sasaki has drawn paintings of the architectural models he created which have been based on places related to art but where he has never traveled to before. The viewer's experience is placed out of alignment because of how the graphical elements, oil paint materials, and perspectives are established. Nobuyuki Takahashi's paintings contain visual elements of western paintings, Japanese paintings, wood print, and photography, yet the paintings possess a balance by not belonging to any single genre. Kazuhito Tanaka skillfully manipulates the viewer's trust in photographic perspective by throwing out the familiar visual perception. Soshi Matsunobe intervenes with our daily perception of items by tracing over objects and shifting the textures. These artists have produced their work by redirecting a concrete method, and the result is a visual sensation belonging to a separate system which has slipped past the sensation felt from existing works. Instead overt abstraction, you will find discreet abstraction.