AI
KIJIMA at 548 west 22 street
April
5-28, 2012
reception:
Thursday April 5, 6-8p
Hallucinatory
Technicolor textile amalgamations of everything from bits of picnic blankets to
kimonos, Ai Kijima’s quilts are so visually tightly packed as to make the
concept of horror vacui superfluous. With compositional complexity, various
values are recombined into a dizzying harmonious whole, using “old” technology
(a sewing machine) to test and prod in a very new and contemporary manner the
boundaries and borders of appropriation and (im)proprietary borrowing. Compulsively
cutting, stitching, and transforming, she shrewdly expands on the inherent
nature of quilting as a traditional craft already depending on the reuse of
previously owned materials, conjuring up a recycled visionary fantasia that in
its cacophonous overabundance paradoxically achieves a certain level of
pictorial calm. The discarded and thrown away commercially-printed cloth is
adapted by this self-professed “fabric and sewing addict” to a bizarre
composite realm full of crowds of cavorting reconstituted characters. Folkloric
archetypes and their offspring, corporate and entertainment characters and
logos, are the found objects that range from unicorns and cats to a vintage
revolver to Lucy’s psychiatric booth from “Peanuts,” a purple Teletubbie, Little
Orphan Annie, Tony the Tiger, Winnie the Pooh, Bob Marley, Homer and Marge
Simpsons, Sponge Bob Square Pants – and that’s just in one work – all
promiscuously mingling in warm and fuzzy but also unsettling and twisted
fabric-scapes of mindboggling intricacy.
“I
consider myself an artist with craftsmanship. Although my materials are very
domestic and my techniques come from quilting, I believe I can incarnate them
into something else.” And she does, taking “craft” to another place, entering
new dimensions, and building up possible narratives, all from the discarded
remnants of people’s personal lives. In an act of transformative
re-contextualization, the two large works on display appear to be paintings
from afar but on closer inspection are quilts, though the distinction is
immaterial in the face of such off-the-charts skill and execution. Sleight of
hand is at play, trickery, in an exalted sense, with things, and parts of
things lurking ambiguously in the background, and what could be seen as
overwhelming is the fascinating sum of the parts that is greater than the
whole. The wild conglomeration (to cite the second piece on view) of football
players, basketball stars, feathers, Scooby Doo, Superman, pirates, Chief
Joseph, Teenage Ninja Turtles, and Garfield combine to be that “something else”
Kijima alludes and aspires to, and achieves. Personal interpretations and
visions of the world are converted into expressive collages of mass production
that double as abstract “paintings,” the detritus of pop culture is subdued and
wrestled with, re-combined and blended, bringing forth an imaginative zone of
excess handled with remarkable finesse.
Franklin
Parrasch Gallery will be holding a reception for the artist on Thursday April
5, 2012 from 6-8p at 548 WEST 22 STREET.
This
exhibition takes place at 548 West 22 Street; hours are 11a-5p Tuesday-Friday,
10a-6p Saturday.
For images, biography, and further information, please contact the gallery at info@franklinparrasch.com
or 212-246-5360, Tuesday-Saturday 10a-6p.
franklin
parrasch gallery
20 w 57
st and 548 w
22 st
t
212-246-5360 f 212-246-5391
info@franklinparrasch.com
www.franklinparrasch.com
