EXHIBITION

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Photo by Takuya Oshima (Northern Studio)
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Photo by Takuya Oshima (Northern Studio)
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Photo by Takuya Oshima (Northern Studio)

Imura Art Gallery is pleased to present Tsuzuru Minamo [Composed Surfaces] a solo exhibition of the works of Aya Kawato.
 
 With sponsorship from Kawashima Selkon Textiles, Kawato is currently overseeing the design and production of a tsuzure-ori tapestry for the Guest House at Expo 2025 Osaka, Kansai, Japan, the upcoming World Expo. The exhibition will display about 13 grid paintings inspired by tsuzure-ori fabric produced by Kawashima Textile.

 Kawato was influenced by her father, a neuroscientist, from an early age. As a result, she became keenly aware that people perceive the world through their brains, and she became particularly interested in optical illusions. During her undergraduate years in Kyoto, she studied traditional Japanese dyeing and weaving, but after searching for a form of expression more suited to her ideas, she arrived at painting. While working on her doctorate at Tokyo University of the Arts, she began showing grid paintings examining the theme of "Controlled and Uncontrolled."

 Keeping to this "Controlled and Uncontrolled" theme, Kawato has since developed it in various directions, including a series inspired by oshima tsumugi (a type of hand-woven silk textile), and a series that uses images of brain activity from experiments in neuroscience. This latest iteration, inspired by tsuzure-ori, features expansive compositions that cover the whole surface and vivid gradations that produce an impressive shimmering effect.

 Tsuzure-ori is a technique for weaving entirely by hand that has been used all over the world since ancient times, but the distinctive feature of the tsuzure-ori made by Kawashima Textile is its use of color. Jinbei Kawashima II focused his efforts on the expression of paintings in textile form, and in the Meiji period, witnessing the advances being made in the direction of using pigments with more colors than ever before in nihonga (a Japanese style of painting), he began studying the use of more colors in tsuzure-ori. He then developed his own unique color-blurring technique and produced many textiles that were faithful to the original paintings. Kawato was impressed by the craftsmen at Kawashima Textile. She felt that the sight of them at their looms, weaving the weft threads into the warp threads was akin to watching the emergence of beautiful colors of the surface of water. This experience informs the exhibition title, “Tsuzuru Minamo” or “Composed Surfaces.

 At first glance, these grid paintings can seem cold and inorganic, but viewers soon sense an innate warmth, perhaps because misalignments arising from repetitive manual work and discrepancies between reality and image arising from optical illusions are all incorporated, becoming part of the beauty of the work. The exhibition is an opportunity for a close examination of these paintings, Aya Kawato’s latest works.

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Aya Kawato: Tsuzuru Minamo

2024.09.07 (Sat.) - 2024.09.28 (Sat.) *日月祝 休廊

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