HORI Kosai "Origin - naked place"（TOKYO）
20 July - 20 August 2011
“Origin – naked place”, an exhibition by Hori Kosai opening at Mizuma Art Gallery on the 20th (Wednesday) of July, 2011.
Executing a stroke on the surface. Analyzing that one stroke. Communicating with the space and letting the brush slide along the surface. Observe. His process may be repetitive; but the surface is always different and new, allowing Hori to express his untamed perspective and intuition. This is how Hori creates his one line, his art.
His materials, canvas, acrylic paint, natural mineral pigments and Japanese ink are similar to those of Japanese painting. However, his work is in neither of the genre. Hori is adherent to the borderline of painting.
40 years ago, Hori became a performance artist to rediscover painting. In order to develop himself as a painter he decided that he would no longer stay in the cliché of painting, he had to become an outsider. After 10 years of becoming a performance artist, he stated, “the rim of painting will always be the rim and nothing else. The substantial truth of painting could only be discovered from the center of painting.” And so he had returned to facing the canvas. Over the years, as he traveled over the borderline and back, he discovered the interval of the margin. As he stood at the midpoint of the inside and outside of painting, a new world, free to develop, spread in front of him.
This exhibition in Japan will be his first in 4 years. There will be several different works by Hori Kosai, such as voluminous paintings, paintings on photography, a performance on screen and others. We will enter an unidentified land, a “naked place”, and seek the untrodden footsteps of Hori.
Please use this opportunity to peruse Hori Kosai’s work at our gallery.
Hori Kosai : Profile
He was born in 1947 in Toyama Prefecture. In1967, he entered Tama Art University’s Oil Painting course and studied there until 1970. In 1969, Hori had his first exhibition. His works mainly consisted of installations and performances until 1979, his works became centralized by painting, using acrylic paint as well as natural mineral pigments, sumi and oil sticks.
Since1988, his base of painting became Japanese paper on canvas. In 1988, he restarted performance art and in the following year, he initiated “Unit 00” with Hori Elise and Tonaka Minoru. Further more, he created works on film, drawings on photography, and site-specific Art. He has exhibited his works in Biennale of Paris in 1977 and Venice in 1984. Recent major exhibitions include, “Hori Kosei exhibition” SPACE HONGJEE, Gallery Yookgongsa (Korea), “Festival of the Earth, Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial” and etc.
