Fulcrum Arts and the Shumei Arts Council are cooperating to present the collaged printed works of Japanese artist Yuko Kimura on “Cosmic Collages” this Saturday, Sept. 3, at the Shumei Hall Gallery at 2430 E. Colorado Blvd. in Pasadena.
The exhibition is part of the 2022 Fulcrum Arts Festival, a regional celebration of art and science across Greater Los Angeles. This year’s festival features a robust program of exhibitions, performances, lectures, screenings, and workshops – all centered around the theme of “Deep Ocean/Deep Space.”
Inspired by Japanese boro garments, which are patched together from worn fragments of indigo cloth, and by her grandmother’s habit of saving fabric scraps to patch together into new garments for her family, Kimura brings together various print-media, combining contemporary and traditional printmaking techniques from Japan and the West – including etching, aquatint, and monotype – with indigo-dyeing methods that reference the sea, the night sky, and the Universe beyond.
The resulting, richly layered and textured works on paper invite the slow, gentle contemplation of archetypal themes such as time, decay, and renewal. Kimura advances these themes in Cosmic Collages, which features recent work that pairs the artist’s own handmade washi paper with old, worm-eaten pages from printed, antique Japanese books.
Yuko Kimura was born in 1968 in Oakland and spent her childhood in Japan. She returned to the U.S. in 1989 and received a BFA in printmaking from the Cleveland Institute of Art in 1994 and an MFA in printmaking from the University of Michigan in 1997.
Recently, the New York Times art critic Benjamin Genochio wrote of Kimura’s work in a group show: “Occasionally you hit upon something tasty and out of the ordinary like Masha Ryskin and Yuko Kimura’s billowing fabric installation. It is raw, inventive and has trippy-qualities that seem an embodiment of the condition of contemporary art now.”
“Cosmic Collages” is organized by Japanese art historian and independent curator Meher McArthur.
For more information, visit https://fulcrumfestival.org/exhibit/deep-ocean-deep-space-cosmic-collages-by-yuko-kimura/ or call (626) 584-8841.
