2017 / Wakana Kimura’s artwork featured at Glendale library and art center exhibition “Natural Selections” May 13 – July 1
An artwork by Wakana Kimura / Title: One trifle-beset night, t’was the moon, not I, that saw the pond lotus bloom / Year: 2015 / Medium: water color, sumi ink, marker, acrylic color, vinyl color, washi paper (daitoku roll, machine made in Fukui Prefecture, Japan, Hiromi Paper Inc. 98 x 308 inches total)
Glendale Brand Library and Art Center
Natural Selections
May 13 – July 1, 2017
Inspirited by nature, the vivid compositions of 5 Los Angeles based artists will transform the gallery at Brand
Opening Reception
Saturday, May 13, 2017, 6 – 9 PM
In Glendale, Brand Library & Art Center presents the artwork of Amabelle Aguiluz, Sarajo Frieden, Wakana Kimura, Karin Lanzoni and Hiroko Yoshimoto in an exhibition that embraces the fluid and instinctive nature of each artists’ practice while honoring the sophistication of their invention.
Purely non-representational or suggestively figurative, the works in this exhibition are deeply felt and allusive.
Created in a variety of mediums, including painting, drawing, collage, sculpture, and installation, the works are inspirited by nature with vivid compositions of organic complexity.
Intuitive forms emerge, driven by the technical facility of each artist, engaging the viewer in the thought provoking pursuit of meaning.
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Wakana Kimura’s artwork, monumental in size, appears to pay homage to the Abstract Expressionist movement of the West and the bold Zen Buddhist brush painting of her home country, Japan.
The raw energy of the work, expressed in sweeping lines and splashes of color, is the initial seduction, but upon closer reflection the meticulous detail of the work emerges.
Against the dynamic strokes of her calligraphic outbursts are fastidiously drawn patterns, symbols, animals, plants and deities from Buddhist iconography.
The juxtaposition within the work arose from shifts in Kimura’s artistic and cultural perspectives over the last decade. Having focused her studies in Western abstraction, in particular on color, tone, and mark-making, she began looking for new inspiration in her work and was drawn back to Japan’s rich artistic heritage.
The “markings” in her abstract work started to incorporate Japanese motif and what began with a single mark continued to build, facilitating a conversation, and now a visual communication between the East and the West.
Wakana Kimura graduated from the Tokyo University of the Arts with BFA. After moving to the United States in 2007, she received her MFA from Otis College of Arts and Design in 2011.
Her work has been exhibited throughout Japan and the United States, with recent solo exhibitions at the Pomona College Museum of Art and LA Art Core. Kimura is the recipient of a fellowship to the Artist First Foundation.
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