Shun Art Gallery·Shanghai is honoured to announce the group exhibition “Drawing” for Jiro Yos
hihara, Sadaharu Horio, and Toshimitsu Imai. The exhibition presents the pen and paper works created by Yoshihara from 1955 to 1965 and his “Enso” calligraphies from the 1960s, as well as Horio’s creations on paper in 2013, and Imai’s acrylic works in 1958.
This exhibition is an interesting retrospective exploration. After World War II, in the 1940s and 1950s, American abstract expressionist artists chose to express themselves with action painting and color field painting. At the same time, a group of artists of different nationalities found new ways in Europe and discovered an informal “Autre” (another) abstract language. French art critic Michel Tapié refined the concept of “Art Informel” in 1951: exploring color, texture, line and movement with free-flowing gestural abstraction. Toshimitsu Imai, who was living in France at the time, was one of the members of “Art Informel”. After Imai returned, he brought this concept to Japan, which aroused a hot response in the Japanese art circle in the 1950s and 1960s. In the exhibition, Imai’s works were created in 1958. He uses bright colors and explosive brushwork to depict direct emotions. Although the works are permeated with surging emotions, the composition remains restrained. Obviously, in addition to European abstract art, Japanese aesthetics also subtly influenced artists.
During the same period, in Kansai, Japan in 1954, Jiro Yoshihara founded the most influential avant-garde art group “Gutai” after the war in Japan. Yoshihara said in “Gutai Manifesto”: “Using the body as a medium… Free spirit and Matter (material) collide with each other, keep a distance”. Yoshihara sent the “Manifesto” to the art critic Michel Tapié, which led to Tapié’s visit to Japan in 1957 and became a beautiful story in art history. In the pen and paper works created by Yoshihara from 1955 to 1965, we can see the immediacy and unconscious automatic swaying advocated by abstract painting at that time, and at the same time, the spiritual power of oriental calligraphy is also bred in it. Since the 1960s, Yoshihara began to create “Enso”, he believes that “Enso” is not an oriental art, and although his initial research objects may be partly Japanese (oriental), his creations have always surpassed the gap between the East and the West, maintain the sincerity of the artist. On a more macro level, his attempts to go beyond gestural abstraction stand in stark contrast to the global trends of “minimalism” and “cold abstraction” in contemporary art.
As one of the youngest members of the Gutai, Sadaharu Horio joined the Gutai in 1966. Based on the avant-garde spirit of the Gutai, he persisted in performing experimental art for decades. He is also a pioneer of modern Kobe performance art. Horio’s creation emphasizes speed and process, deconstructing the concept of taking works as the core. Through his works, he encourages us to appreciate ordinary things and cherish every moment that cannot be copied. He uses various materials, such as metal fragments, wood, and stones as indirect tools for painting, leaving unique traces on the canvas. He often said that to achieve the same degree of spontaneity, the artist’s mind must be able to return to its true, childlike wonderful state.
The exhibition “Drawing” unfolds a special map of the exploration of abstract painting after World War II. While Europe and the United States are scrambling for the first place, we see that European and Asian artists are enthusiastically providing nourishment for each other, and working together to help each other, leaving a wonderful story in art history.
“Drawing” is a creation through body movements that externalize the spirit. Artists need to remove obstacles and express themselves without limitation, close to “writing” in “Xieyi”, when the emotion has reached the extreme state, which expresses the feelings directly; the body becomes a conduit, and the transcendence of the spirit emerges vividly on the paper, presenting the philosophy of “between”: between void and substance, between order and chaos, between action and interiority, between matter and spirit, etc. These relationships seem to be opposites, but they can be sedate, the artist is like an acrobat walking on a balance beam, balancing the elegance between the two.