This exhibition presents 30 paintings by 9 leading contemporary artists, such as Takashi MURAKAMI, Takanobu KOBAYASHI and Yoshitomo NARA.
Venue : Galeri Petronas, Level 3, Suria KLCC
Duration : 27 November 2004~2 January 2005
Time : 10am – 8pm
Open daily except Mondays
Admission : Free
“Painting for Joy: New Japanese Painting in 1990’s”, is an attempt to show how young Japanese artists have understood and tried to further develop artistic expression in their genre with its long tradition in the final decade of the twentieth century, a time of rapid developments in information networks and communications technology.
Artists’ Profile
Takashi MURAKAMI 村上隆
Born in Tokyo, in 1962. He is a graduate of Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, and received his Ph.D. in 1993. His work has been exhibited in prestigious museums all over the world, including the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and a solo retrospective exhibition at the Bard College Museum of Art, U.S. Through his works, he has played with these oppositions in East and West, past and present, high art and low culture while remaining consistently amusing and accessible. His work morphs the worlds of popular contemporary Japanese cartoons and historic Japanese painting.
Yoshitomo NARA 奈良美智
Born in Aomori, in 1959. He graduated from Aichi Prefectural University Fine Arts and Music in 1985, and completed his M.F.A in 1987. He is one of the most celebrated contemporary artists to have emerged from Japan has achieved cult status. His artwork appears simply adorable and peaceful; however, underneath the surface of the work is a deep, at time dark, exploration of the psychological universe of childhood. His works really instills the viewer with a juxtaposition of the innocence of child and the evil nature of humanity, or the fall from grace.
Makoto AIDA 会田誠
Born in Niigata, in 1965. He is a graduate of Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, and completed his M.F.A. in 1991. He is not a comic artist, but a “fine” artist. At one of his exhibitions, however, he presented a limited edition of “Mutant Hanako”. This comic story about war was drawn in an incomplete style: just the pencil sketches, without inking or toning.
Takanobu KOBAYASHI 小林孝亘
Born in Tokyo, in 1960. He graduated from Aichi Prefectural University of Fine Arts and Music in 1986. He was awarded the VOCA Encouragement Prize in 1996. His subjects are mostly mundane objects taken from his everyday life ? a bathtub, a pillow, cutlery and crockery, a microware oven. About 30 oil paintings and pencil on paper drawings join a single silkscreen print by him to make up the exhibition “Seventy-Five Days,” a solo show at the Nishimura Gallery on Tokyo’s Ginza strip.
Naofumi MARUYAMA 丸山直文
Born in Niigata, in 1964. He completed courses at the Basic Seminar Schooling System in 1990. Maruyama’s work in 1990 has been included in major exhibitions such as October Art Festival Mito Art Tower, Ibaraki, Japan 1990, and A Perspective on Contemporary Art, The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo 1993.
Chiezo TARO 太郎千恵藏
Born in Tokyo, in 1962. He graduated from New York University, Tish School of Arts in 1984. He organized Hyper-Realistic Art and Concept Laboratory. He is one of perhaps a dozen Japanese visual artists to have made a name for themselves overseas in the last decade. Despite his contention that he does not want to shock, shock is precisely what he did with his 1993 solo show at New York’s Sandra Gering Gallery, also presented at NICAF (Japan International Contemporary Art Fair) in Yokohama the same year.
Miran FUKUDA 福田美蘭
Born in Tokyo, in 1963. She graduated from Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music (M.F. A., 1987). She has won numerous national and international awards over the course of her career, including the Fine Work Prize at the 18th Contemporary Art Exhibition of Japan, 1987. Her exhibition has examined and pursued structure of the pictorial establishment and the meaning of an act to show works. By adopting images inspired by the establishment masterpieces and using duplication media such as printing technique, photography and computer, she tried to criticize the pictorial establishment as information society of the present day.
Nobuhiko NUKATA 額田宣彦
Born in Osaka, 1963. He graduated from Aichi Prefectural University of Fine Arts and Music in 1988. He is a painter based in Osaka. For the last 15 years or so, he has been using only his hand and brush to create big geometric pictures without using rulers and masking tape. They, at first glance anyway, look very much like they were done either on a drafting table or a computer.
Yoshitaka ECHIZENYA 越前谷嘉高
Born in Hokkaido, in 1961. He graduated from Tama University of Art in 1984, and obtained his M.F.A. in 1986. He currently lives and works in Chiba.
