Press Releases - Viridian Artists

Current Exhibition

Press Releases - Viridian Artists

Tazuko Fuji
Exhibition Oil Paintings, Drawings & Sculpture
Dates May 15- June 2, 2012
Reception Thursday, May 17th, 5-7p.m.
Chelsea, NYC: Viridian Artists is extremely proud to present the 12th solo exhibition of Tazuko Fujii in its new space at 548 W 28th Street. Her exhibition of Oil Paintings, Drawings & Sculpture extends from May 15th to June 2nd, with an opening reception Thursday, May 17th, 5-7p.m.

The noted Japanese artist Tazuko Fujii has been exhibiting her art for 60 years and yet the art she creates remains always in touch with both the spirits of these times and the spirits of the past. Her artistic career began with the study of KANA, the Japanese phonetic alphabet originating in China in the Kan Era. Tazuko Fujii has incorporated this beautifully executed form of brush writing into her drawings, paintings, collages and sculpture as well as in the artistry of her letters to friends and family.

May is the perfect month to see an exhibition of Tazuko Fujii's art for her work evokes the spiritual beauty of nature that Sakura or the cherry blossom symbolizes in Japan. The abstract imagery of Tazuko Fujii's fine art, composed of a wide variety of handmade Japanese papers, inks and kimono fabrics, create a swirling world of the past, present & future, echoed in the Kawachi Fuji Gardens in Kitakyushu, Japan. The artist believes there is a symbiotic relationship between all things, that everything contains the souls of the deceased and that all in nature must be honored.

Though Tazuko Fujii's early paintings were influenced by contemporary American art, the roots of her exquisite black-based abstractions arise out of Japan. Akin to the collage drawings and paintings that Tazuko has created over the years are the resin sculptures the artist has made for the past 25 years in which she embeds ceremonial paper strings, hand-made papers and other materials. Her profound internal thinking which encompasses modern and classical literature, philosophy and religion has been cultivated over many years, deepening the complexity of her art.

Tazuko Fujii's art has won numerous prizes including the Mayor Prize in the Hokuriku Modern Art Exhibit in Kanazawa City, Japan and the Mainichi Newspaper Company Prize in the Women Artists Association of Japan Annual Exhibition. Her art is in the collections of the Ishikawa Prefectual Museum of Art in Japan, the Georgia University Collection in Atlanta and the Manhattan Laboratory Museum in NYC, among others.

We hope that you will be able to meet this outstanding artist and share her view of life through the vision of her incredibly fascinating artworks.

• VIRIDIAN ARTISTS, INC.
• 548 West 28th St, 6th fl.
• New York, NY 10001
• Director: Vernita Nemec
• Tuesday - Saturday 12-6PM
• Tel/Fax: 212-414-4040

Oi Sawa
Exhibition Oil Paintings on Tin and Drawings
Dates June 5- June 23, 2012
Reception Thursday, May 17th, 5-7p.m.
Chelsea, NYC: Viridian Artists is extremely proud to present the 12th solo exhibition of Oi Sawa in its new space at 548 W 28th Street. Her exhibition of "Oil Paintings on Tin and Drawings" extends from May 15th to June 2nd, with an opening reception Thursday, May 17th, 5-7p.m.

The noted Japanese artist Oi Sawa has made a unique choice of materials in her artmaking. For years she has created oil painting on tin and drawings on film and paper. Her images too are unique in that they transcend the influences of both Eastern & Western art, focusing on abstract structures in black, grey and silver that utilize architectural imaginings.

One senses an Escherâ€“like vision combined with the influence of cubism in her complex rendering of space that create both a geometry of images as well as a sense of three dimensional structures. Originally inspired by reflections on a stovepipe in her studio decades ago, she uses tin with a signature approach that has intensified and matured over the years. The artist's limited palette of silvery gunmetal grays has deepened with the spirit of those reflections with the flames of the fires within the stove remembered with touches of reds and golds, adding the sense that nature has not altogether departed.

Oi Sawa's oil paintings on tin as large 56 inches by 86 inches distinctively evoke towers and orbs floating and swirling in an unknown atmosphere of perhaps the future, perhaps the past. Her tiny collage drawings on film and paper are graphically rendered and the complex images echo structures of dark and futuristic places akin to those in her large paintings.

Until 2007, the artist was a professor at the Musashino Art University in Tokyo in their Department of Scenography, Display and Fashion Design and this year also worked with survivors of the Fukushima nuclear disaster site.

Oi Sawa has won numerous prizes including the Noma Prize in the 27th Annual Ichiyokai Art Exhibition. Her art is included in the collections of the Russell Sage Foundation, Ishikawa Prefectual Museum of Art in Japan, the Manhattan Laboratory Museum and the Nomura Computer System America both in New York, among others. We hope that you will be able to meet this outstanding artist and share her view of life through the vision of her incredibly fascinating artworks.

• VIRIDIAN ARTISTS, INC.
• 548 West 28th St, 6th fl.
• New York, NY 10001
• Director: Vernita Nemec
• Tuesday - Saturday 12-6PM
• Tel/Fax: 212-414-4040

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