News

Group Show
Glen Baldridge, Holly Coulis, Alex Dodge, Keisuke Shirota

Glen Baldridge
 No Way
2021
Gouache on paper
60.96 x 46.04 cm
Holly Coulis
Lemon on End
2022
Gouache on Arches paper
45.72 x 60.96 cm
Alex Dodge
Tanks – January 24, 2023 (Midnight Embassy)
2023
oil and acrylic on canvas
42.2 x 56.2 cm
Keisuke Shirota
Coastal path 
2022 – 2023
photograph and oil on canvas board mounted on wood frame
60 x 90cm

Maki Fine Arts is pleased to present a group show featuring new and recent works by four artists starting Saturday, May 13, through June 25, 2023.

Glen Baldridge
Born in 1977, Nashville, Tennessee. Recent shows include Wigwag (solo, Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery, 2023), What Now Who How (solo, Halsey McKay Gallery, 2022), No Way (solo, Halsey McKay Gallery, 2019). His works have been added to collections at Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum, RISD Museum.

Holly Coulis
Born in 1968, Toronto, Canada. Recent shows include Sun Shift (solo, Cooper Cole Gallery, 2023), Eyes and Yous (solo, Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery, 2022), Orbit (solo, Philip Martin Gallery, 2021). Her works have been added to collections at Blanton Museum of Art, Nerman Museum of Art.

Alex Dodge
Born 1977 in Denver, Colorado. His recent shows include Personal Day (solo, BB&M, 2023), Laundry Day : It all comes out in the Wash(solo, Maki Fine Arts, 2021), (solo, Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery, 2020), Programmed: Rules, Codes, and Choreographies in Art, 1965-2018 (Whitney Museum of American Art, 2018-2019). His works have been added to collections at Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, RISD Museum.

Keisuke Shirota
Born 1975 in Kanagawa, Japan. His recent exhibitions include Beyond the Frame (two person,  haco -art brewing gallery- , 2023), Out of the frame (solo, Maki Fine Arts, 2022), Over (solo, Maki Fine Arts, 2021), PAINT,SEEING PHOTOS (solo, Chigasaki City Museum of Art, 2019-2020). His works have been added to collections at Chigasaki City Museum of Art.

Artist

Keisuke Shirota

November 9 – December 23, 2023
Yokosuka Art Center

link

Keisuke Shirota “Out of the frame”

Keisuke Shirota
Seashore
2021-2022
Photograph and oil on canvas board mounted on wood frame
55×71.5cm

Maki Fine Arts is pleased to present Out of the frame, a solo show by Keisuke Shirota, starting Saturday, March 26, through Sunday, April 24, 2022. Shirota’s works combining photographs with paintings have been showcased in numerus shows including PAINT, SEEING PHOTOS at the Chigasaki City Museum of Art in 2019. In his second solo show with Maki Fine Arts, he will present new works that utilize snapshots that have been augmented by painting beyond the borders. His new works are based on his representational work “A Sense of Distance” he began creating around 2003. Misalignments created from overlapping photographs and voids (frames) formed through the drawings make the viewer notice the ambiguity found in the act of looking. At same time, Shirota’s works hint at the complex relationship between photography and painting.

Out of the frame

One photograph. When staring at a single image, what flickers through my mind is the other possibilities–what ended up outside the frame. Pressing the shutter and taking the photograph is certainly one option. Regardless of the intention–whether it was to record a decisive moment or a boring, ordinary moment in time–unless you chose the path of not documenting the moment, there is no other way but to press the shutter to capture an image. The act of photography, regardless of one’s skill level, always involves choosing to frame a certain moment. On the flip side however, doesn’t it also simultaneously create numerous un-selected moments and frames? Even with the seemingly unlimited potential to film endless moments courtesy of today’s digital devices and smart phones, I am unable to dismiss these thoughts that intensify further. The time I spend looking at the photos seem to double as a time to confront the other possibilities that have spilled over from the chosen option.

The un-captured alternative option. The other could-have-been-selected frame.
As I negotiate with the limit created by the frame of the canvas, I treat the photograph as an access point to the other possibilities, adding brush strokes around it. The more I try to be faithful to the photograph, the tangibility of the gaps between photo and body; photography and painting; and record and memory increase. It goes without saying, the field that was drawn is only one possibility out of an infinite number of possibilities.

Kaisuke Shirota

Keisuke Shirota
Born 1975 in Kanagawa, Japan, Shirota received his M.F.A from Tokyo University of the Arts, Department of Design in 2003. His recent exhibitions include Over (solo, Maki Fine Arts, 2021), PAINT, SEEING PHOTOS (solo, Chigasaki City Museum of Art, 2019-2020), Tracing / Background (solo, Base Gallery, 2013), Shell Artist Selection (The National Art Center, Tokyo, 2013), Photo Reference: Photographic Image in Contemporary Japanese Art Practices (Belgrade Cultural Center, 2012), and his solo show at Galerie Stefan Röpke (2010).

Artist

Keisuke Shirota – five

August 9 – 21, 2023
Mitsukoshi Contemporary Gallery

link

Keisuke Shirota “Over”

Keisuke Shirota
August 15, 2020 (Nijubashi Bridge) / detail
2020
Oil, enamel paint, newspaper photo clippings on canvas, panel
130.3 x 194cm

Maki Fine Arts is pleased to present Over, a solo show by Keisuke Shirota, from Friday, January 8 through February 7, 2021. Shirota’s works combine photo snapshots with paintings, sometimes drawing fictional images beyond the borders of the photograph and sometimes erasing just the people captured in environmental photos by painting over them. His works have recently been exhibited in his solo show PAINT, SEEING PHOTOS at the Chigasaki City Museum of Art (2019-2020). In Shirota’s first show at Maki Fine Arts, Over will focus on the artist’s new works.

Shirota’s depictions use photographs as medium and are constructed through additions, subtractions, or transfers. For additions, fragments of an image are added. For subtractions, the fragments are eliminated. And for transfers, parts of other materials are copied. In his new work “August 15, 2020 (Nijubashi Bridge),” only the tourists are depicted on the canvas after their images have been selectively extracted from photographs capturing scenes of the Nijubashi Bridge. For the base, photo clippings from several newspapers dated August 15, 2020 have been plastered onto the support medium and painted over with white paint. At close examination, traces of the newspaper layers are visible from the sides.

In the age where photograph and image are often thought as synonymous and the definition of photograph blurred due to the prevalence of social media, Shirota provokes the viewer to look at the substance of the photograph through the process of drawing.

To pay close attention to both the excessive image information–which can never be thoroughly seen–as well as the single image.
To realize that while the front of a photograph is full of substantial information, the back is completely blank.
To bring out what could not be seen through structure.
To recognize that the act of painting and drawing are akin to the act of erasing and concealing.
To understand that the plus and the minus progress simultaneously.

These were the things that were especially important to my creative process during the past year.

Keisuke Shirota

Keisuke Shirota
Born 1975 in Kanagawa, Japan, Keisuke Shirota received his M.F.A from Tokyo University of The Arts, Department of Design in 2003. His recent exhibitions include PAINT, SEEING PHOTOS (solo, Chigasaki City Museum of Art, 2019-2020), Tracing / Background (solo, Base Gallery, 2013), Shell Artist Selection (The National Art Center, Tokyo, 2013), Photo Reference: Photographic Image in Contemporary Japanese Art Practices (Belgrade Cultural Center, 2012), and his solo show at Galerie Stefan Röpke (2010).

Artist

Keisuke Shirota – “Recent Discovery” CADAN × ISETAN ART GALLERY

August 2 – 15, 2023
Isetan Shinjuku Store Main Building 6F art gallery

link

Artist

Keisuke Shirota – Uraraka Painting Festival

Beyond the Frame
February 4 – 19, 2023
haco – art brewing gallery –

link

Artist

Keisuke Shirota – Chigasaki City Museum of Art

July 16 – September 4, 2022
Chigasaki City Museum of Art

link