ARTISTS
Etsuko Watanabe & Toshiya Motai: Confrontation
Yumiko Chiba Associates viewing room shinjuku is delighted to present Gegen眉berstellung / confrontation, a two-person show by Etsuko Watanabe and Toshiya Motai, opening March 6, 2021.Etsuko Watanabe studied under Gerhard Richter at Kunstakademie D眉sseldorf, and remained based in Germany for some 30 years thereafter. She now pursues her art pratice from a studio in Japan. Watanabe presents paintings that depict in realistic fashion scenes reminiscent of those from TV, for example, or low-definition images. These works diligently tracing via the technique of painting, with the handwork this entails, single scenes converted momentarily into 鈥渋mages,鈥� down to the distortions and 鈥渘oise鈥� in those images, throw into fresh relief the multiple layers of time between 鈥渋mage鈥� and 鈥減ainting,鈥� and the difference in visual perception between digital and analog.
Like Watanabe, painter and art theorist Toshiya Motai has spent part of his career in Germany. Traveling there in 1983 following his graduation some years earlier from Tokyo Zokei University, he studied painting and art theory under Raimer Jochims at Frankfurt鈥檚 Staatliche Hochschule f眉r Bildende K眉nste-St盲delschule (St盲delschule Academy of Fine Arts). In 2019 he also published Kaiga e 1990鈥�2018 Bijutsuron-shu, a compilation of his essays on art. Motai has spent much of his career delving with increasing depth into the question of format and spirituality in painting, from both practice and theory viewpoints. In recent years these explorations have culminated in paintings of 鈥淨f鈥� series inspired by Matthias Gr眉newald鈥檚 depiction of the Crucifixion in the Isenheim Altarpiece, painted for a charity hospital for infectious disease patients, and the icons of Andrei Rublev.
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Yumiko Chiba Associates viewing room shinjuku is delighted to present Gegen眉berstellung / confrontation, a two-person show by Etsuko Watanabe and Toshiya Motai, opening March 6, 2021.Etsuko Watanabe studied under Gerhard Richter at Kunstakademie D眉sseldorf, and remained based in Germany for some 30 years thereafter. She now pursues her art pratice from a studio in Japan. Watanabe presents paintings that depict in realistic fashion scenes reminiscent of those from TV, for example, or low-definition images. These works diligently tracing via the technique of painting, with the handwork this entails, single scenes converted momentarily into 鈥渋mages,鈥� down to the distortions and 鈥渘oise鈥� in those images, throw into fresh relief the multiple layers of time between 鈥渋mage鈥� and 鈥減ainting,鈥� and the difference in visual perception between digital and analog.
Like Watanabe, painter and art theorist Toshiya Motai has spent part of his career in Germany. Traveling there in 1983 following his graduation some years earlier from Tokyo Zokei University, he studied painting and art theory under Raimer Jochims at Frankfurt鈥檚 Staatliche Hochschule f眉r Bildende K眉nste-St盲delschule (St盲delschule Academy of Fine Arts). In 2019 he also published Kaiga e 1990鈥�2018 Bijutsuron-shu, a compilation of his essays on art. Motai has spent much of his career delving with increasing depth into the question of format and spirituality in painting, from both practice and theory viewpoints. In recent years these explorations have culminated in paintings of 鈥淨f鈥� series inspired by Matthias Gr眉newald鈥檚 depiction of the Crucifixion in the Isenheim Altarpiece, painted for a charity hospital for infectious disease patients, and the icons of Andrei Rublev.
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