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Stefan HOENERLOH and Kiyoshi NAKAGAMI - Prolonging Pleasure
Press release
STEFAN HOENERLOH Prolonging Pleasure March 17 – April 23, 2011
The starting point of the artist’s work is the discovery of East Berlin at the start of the 80s. The sense of history and uncomprehensible dramas that touch each canvas and every image. Hoenerloh’s paintings remind the audience of an unbearable suffering, of dramatic memories of painful tragedies that occured in both the past and present centuries. They show a town without any human presence, without any animals, any vegetation and without any clouds in the sky.
In some of his most recent paintings Hoenerloh revels in the freedom of playing around with the realism and plausibility of the landscapes. The landscapes appear far more like works of pure fiction. The painting entitled « Sound of Silence » represents a low angled view of narrow buildings composed of sculpted stone, overlapping different architectural styles of building, surpassed by improbable bridges that link the buildings between them. The « Main Course Topramen » painting shows buildings built on mezzanines, upon which the elevated ground floors are open thanks to many supporting arches.
At first glance other paintings seem to faithfully reflect urban sites. Hoenerloh succeeds in producing a sense of reality due to his infallible feel for urban sites and architectural compositions. In fact every painting is at the extreme of its subject, the limit of what seems plausible just as much from an architectural and urbanistic point of view as from a colour and light one.
His subject is not as much architecture as it is the passage of time which materialises in the immobile medium of painting, moderated by decaying architecture. His architectral styles, the density of his urban spaces, the vastness of edifices evoking a fossilised yet powerful civilisation. The eroding composition shows a broken down surface, but present a viable structure. Despite appearances, Hoenerloh does not abandon all hope for a metropolitan revitalisation. His landscapes offer the constant possibility of escape to the imprisoned Kafkaïen.
Stefan Hoenerloh shows a developed civilisation within us that has fallen apart, he makes us aware of the vanity of mankind and the dangers of its powerful appetite, whilst allowing it to be the master of its own destiny.
Born in 1960, Stefan Hoenerloh will have a solo show at Academy of Art in Hamburg in 2008 and will participate in two collective shows, one in Kunsthalle Darmstadt and the other at PM Gallery and House in London.
KIYOSHI NAKAGAMI Prolonging Pleasure March 17 – April 23, 2011
« As a painter, there is nothing more difficult for me to represent than light. The ones who can do that are the greatest painters, greatest artists ». Kiyoshi Nakagami
The Gallery Jean-Luc & Takako Richard is pleased to present the Japanese artist Kiyoshi Nakagami, from March 17 to April 23, 2011.
A Nihango Artist
The Japanese artist born in Kanagawa in 1949 was presented in a group exhibition titled « Nihonga Painting, Six Provocative Artists » in Yokohama Museum of Art in 2006. « Nihonga Painting » indicates Japanese painting (Nihon meaning ‘Japan’) in opposition to Western painting. While Takashi Murakami confides in not being considered a Nihonga artist in Japan, Kiyoshi Nakagami achieved this recognition by the authenticity of his art and the fact that his art is rooted in the culture of his country. For his exhibition in Yokohama Museum of Art, Kiyoshi Nakagami has chosen to include a silk painting by Taikan Yokoyama, a piece from 1912 that belongs to the permanent collection of the museum. Kiyoshi Nakagami lives solely in Japan and does not travel abroad often. He is a solitary painter that arouses respect.
An innovative and a secret technique
Nakagami developed a technique that only he mastered. The mental preparation before the creation of the work is a major step in his creative process. This ability to so magnificently reproduce in painting the effects of diffusion of light has no other equivalent. These excellently mastered paintings are created without brush. «Kiyoshi does not like to convey the body movements of the painter on canvas and transmit the fierce passion or the crudeness at all — for example that of the expressionists…Instead, he constantly strives to observe his painting like a « new born »; in a way, he thinks and facilitates its birth ». Nakagami does not imitate the nature; he reproduces natural phenomena identical to those of nature on canvas. He does not reproduce clouds, he creates them concretely.
The light at the center of the painting
His paintings are opposite of the concept of « superflat » painting. There is nothing more three-dimensional than a painting that represents light, the only subject of his work. This golden light appears in the form of a beam or a diluted from of vibrational lines that spread on the dark surface of the painting.
Kiyoshi Nakagami’s painting absorbs the gaze into a meditative space. The contemplation of the viewer is facilitated by the absence of all the material on the canvas that is likely to frontally stop the gaze. The gaze enters into a space of an infinite field of depth. This effect is equally strong in a small-scale painting as in a large diptych. At first sight most people may think the artist deals with the theme of Genesis, yet he gives the viewer the freedom of interpretation. His statement as a painter resides in his ability to reproduce the light and its phenomena. To represent light is the most difficult task for him. It is one of the subjects that the greatest artists face.
« We see a fine but bright line. Where does it come from that ray of light? From the sky? Or from a hidden interior source? The light shines, but its origin is ambiguous ». Toshio Yamanashi
An international reputation
Nakagami’s works are in the National Museum of Modern Art of Tokyo and he had a solo exhibition in Kanagawa Museum of Art in 2008. He is represented by the Hino Gallery in Tokyo since 1989 and by Galerie Jean-Luc & Takako Richard since 2003.
Kiyoshi Nakagami was exhibited in Galerie Jean-Luc + Takako Richard simultaneously with the French artist Hervé Heuzé, another painter of Light, from January 8 to February 26, 2011.