Sokyo Gallery is pleased to present “Koishi-Kei”, a two-person exhibition by Kazuma Koike and Toru Ishii. Koike creates black ceramic sculptures with themes of fictional ancient artifacts, while Ishii dyes images of contemporary society with the inherent graceful lines of Itome Yuzen in vivid colors. Influenced by historical masterpieces, the two artists attempt to reconsider and renew tradition and art. In this exhibition, Koike’s black ceramic sculptures and Ishii’s Yuzen paintings will be combined at Sokyo to create . Please take this opportunity to visit the exhibition.
Kazuma Koike is a painter and sculptor currently based in Osaka. He creates ceramic sculptures, paintings, and drawings based on the theme of fictional ancient artifacts, using idols, urns, large cats, plants, and pineapples as motifs. Interested in “the state in which different elements coexist in harmony” and “the process in which the use and meaning of things change,” Koike’s works, which mix images originating from various places and times, are imbued with a unique sense of floating. In this exhibition, Koike focuses on black ceramics. The serene, hard impression and somewhat comical look of the work stirs the viewer's imagination and allows them to fantasize about the stories behind the work. Meanwhile, the monochromatic black color of the works and the titles which consist of BC (Black Ceramic) and a sequence of numbers, suggest Koike’s intention to suppress and control the information contained in the works.
Toru Ishii continues his experimentation with traditional dye crafts under the theme of "Reinterpretation of Traditional Japanese Crafts in the Modern Age and Criticality of Contemporary Art.” In this exhibition, Ishii presents "Ukiyoe of Reiwa: Tokyo Landscape," a series of works created with dye using the Edo Period's itome yuzen technique. Kyoto, where this exhibition is held, is the birthplace of yuzen dyeing, a technique that fascinated the people of the Edo period for more than 300 years, using vivid colors to create decorative patterns on kimono. For the artwork in this exhibition, Ishii digitally manipulates the Tokyo landscapes he photographed with a film camera to extract the light of today's Tokyo (currently in the Reiwa Era), which is then dyed using Edo period techniques. By crossing the light of today's Tokyo with the traditional Japanese culture of itome yuzen and ukiyoe, both of which were born in the Edo period, the possibilities of ukiyoe expression in the modern age are reexamined. He has also been selected as an overseas trainee for budding artists by the Agency for Cultural Affairs, and based on his two-year study in London, he has been exploring staining and dyeing in Japan and the West, and is now considering new dyeing techniques. He has humorously depicted the ever-changing Japanese society as modern ukiyoe, such as in the "Salaryman series” that comically and satirically depicts Japanese society from an everyday perspective, and the "Urban Nightscape series” that uses urban neon lights, the symbol of a modern city, as its subject.
In both of their works, old images and new senses coexist, and they have a uniqueness that is not likely to have been seen anywhere before. Koike's black ceramic sculptures and Ishii's yuzen paintings are combined in the exhibition "Koishi-Kei" to create scenery, called at Sokyo Gallery. We hope you will take this opportunity to visit the exhibition.
For more information and images, please contact:
sokyoAtsumi@gallery-sokyo.jp/ Tel: 080-7591-5212
SOKYO ATSUMI 3F TERRADA ART COMPLEX II
1-32-8 Higashi-shinagawa, Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo 140-0002 Japan
