Kaoru Arima “FAUST IN MARIENBAD by The quest for Art”
2020. 7. 15 Wed - 8. 9 Sun
Summer holidays：8. 12 - 8. 18
We are pleased to announce our presentation of “FAUST IN MARIENBAD by The quest for Art”, Kaoru Arima’s third solo exhibition with the gallery. A selection of Arima’s recent solo and group exhibitions includes “RESTONS UNIS: YOU’LL NEVER WALK ALONE” presented by Edouard Montassut at Emmanuel Perrotin, Paris (2020), “FAUST IN MARIENBAD by Paris 2019”, Édouard Montassut, Paris (2019), “To See”, Queer Thoughts, New York (2018), “Re-born Art Festival”, Miyagi (2019, 2017). Significant past exhibitions include : “The Age of Micropop: The New Generation of Japanese Artists”, Art Tower Mito Contemporary Gallery, Mito (2007),”54th Carnegie International”, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (2004) “How Latitudes Become Forms”, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2003)
The present exhibition consists of work in the multiple “classic” media that have now become Arima’s signature : painting, drawing and sculpture. It remains worth noting that Arima came to painting and sculpture at a relatively late stage of his practice as an artist; in the mid-late 1990’s, Arima received acclaim within Japan and abroad for his cartoonish yet diaristic drawings on newsprint as well as his activities under the guise of the Art Drug Center. While Arima continues to shepherd the activities of (now younger) colleagues as the supervisor of a new Art Drug Center as part of the cultural redevelopment of Ishinomaki, Japan, post earthquake and tsunami, and while he continues to create whimsical drawings, recent focus both by the artist and his admirers, has turned towards painted portraiture and both classically informed and more purely haptic sculptures. Arima approached the media of painting and sculpture with a fully formed, highly personal practice devoid of any particular ideology; consequently, the work has the form and energy that one is familiar with in the work of a younger generation of artists; yet, unselfconsciously, Arima also shamelessy learns how to paint and sculpt in plain sight, co-opting and subverting a Beuysian dictum by asserting that, to some degree, any artist can be a painter.
