“Nihonga: New Traditions” Exhibition
Dillon Gallery
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In honor of New York’s Asia Week, Dillon Gallery will present its fifth survey on contemporary Japanese painting. The exhibition “Nihonga: New Traditions” will feature the work of eight contemporary painters from Japan. The exhibition highlights the broad artistic stratagems used to master compositional space. Finding a distinctive way to pay homage to their heritage, each artist included in this exhibition expands the expressive vocabulary found within the long tradition of Nihonga (Japanese-Style Painting)
Nihonga is a technique whose roots extend back more than a thousand years. The term, created in the 19th century to distinguish traditional painting methods from Western-influenced art, has often been synonymous with art of the past. Its practitioners incorporate time-honored materials such as silk, rice-paper, ground semi-precious minerals as well as gold and silver leaf into their paintings. Nihonga artists have tended to look to the visual forms and conventions of the past during most of this century. The most recent generation of painters, however, have reinvigorated the style in an attempt to change the way the practice is perceived. The artists selected for this exhibition have each found a stylistic approach that is as powerful as it is contemporary. While recognizing the conventional principles of the respected technique of Nihonga painting, each artist strives to redefine this ancient art practice.
Bando and Saito craft an atmosphere of ethereality in their work: Bando builds up the paint layer by adding ground oyster shell to expose subtle tonal variations of the medium itself, Saito’s delicate strands of color are brought to light in his translucent abstractions. Using large swathes of vibrant color the master of Nihonga, Fujimura, creates a sense of depth and movement in his abstract compositions. Yoshiga’s semi-transparent compositions possess a modern monumentality, yet hark back to the ancient practice of the decorative screen tradition. Okamura celebrates nature and the abstract concept of harmony with a limited palette consisting of embroidery and Sumi ink (traditional Japanese black ink) on handmade paper. Taking his subject from a work by Chinese poet T'ao Yuan-ming (365-427), Kouzaki shares his vision of a utopia, which includes unusual creatures inhabiting a bizarre and vast expanse of space. Yuzo Ono has evolved the technique by covering large aluminum panels with thick pigments and then using a deductive technique to reveal the metal beneath. Chen Wenguang’s works are included in the survey to show the link between Japanese and Chinese practitioners that has spanned centuries of artistic influence.
Media
Schedule
from March 04, 2010 to March 29, 2010