Hiroka Yamashita – Earthing | Caprii | Ed. 8

Name: Hiroka Yamashita – Earthing | Caprii | Ed. 8
Brand: Sies + Höke
Price: 10.0 EUR
Availability: InStock

€10,00

• English, Softcover
• 32 pages
• 16,8 x 23,5 cm
• Interview: Kristian Vistrup Madsen
• Editing: Nina Weimer
• Design: Thomas Spallek
• ISBN 978-3-932729-48-5
• Published by Sies + Höke, 2024

Published on the occasion of the exhibition:

Hiroka Yamashita
Earthing
Aug 30th – Sep 28th, 2024
Caprii by Sies + Höke, Orangeriestr. 6, 40213 Düsseldorf.

Each of the solo and group exhibitions composing the dynamic, playful programme of Caprii is accompanied by a booklet, which offers an extended plane for holistically encountering the praxis of the respective artists.

The eighth edition presents new paintings my Hiroka Yamashita. Hiroka Yamashita (b. 1991) is a contemporary painter based in Okayama, Japan. Trained in Japanese calligraphy, Yamashita fuses techniques from Western and nihonga painterly traditions together with literary references in a style that evades distinct classification. Figuration and abstraction coexist in ethereal and hazy intermundia formed by blurred contours and spontaneously applied colours, ranging from soft pastels to deep somber shades, to embody human sentiments and emotional subtleties in metaphoric expressions of natural and everyday phenomena. Dreamy improbability and animistic sensibilities emanate through compositions meticulously contemplating existence in multidimensional worlds and exploring new articulations of Japanese sensibility on the ephemeral. From otherworldly forces of mythology and their embedded knowledge to the mundane actions of the present, often afflicted with many an instance of historical amnesia, the morphing, gentle surreality of Yamashita’s oeuvre tenderly situates itself between the ominous and the soothing.

The booklet series is designed by Studio Thomas Spallek and is made using remnant paper stock sourced from Druckerei Kettler.

Courtesy the artist; Taka Ishii Gallery, Tokyo; Caprii by Sies + Höke, Düsseldorf

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Hiroka Yamashita – Earthing, 2024, Caprii, Düsseldorf

For Hiroka Yamashita’s solo exhibition at Sies + Höke’s project space Caprii, the Okayama-based artist presents a series of new paintings of intimate subjects from nature that fuse the everyday with the transcendent. Here, she speaks with Kristian Vistrup Madsen about her inspirations for the exhibition. * KVM: For the exhibition at Caprii you’ve made a series of fairly small paintings of subjects from nature. How have you conceptualised the show? HY: I just had an exhibition at BLUM Gallery in Los Angeles that closed at the end of August. For that, I made seven large paintings that took scenes from Japanese mythology and my research into the traditional type of Japanese performance called kagura as their starting point. But I’ve been working on smaller paintings simultaneously, and the spontaneity that they allow for seems to invite a different, more intimate subject matter. I thought this register was more suitable for the exhibition at Caprii. I really enjoy East Asian calligraphy—I think you can express the essence of a thing through the different shades of the ink and the movements of the brush. To me, the smaller paintings present an opportunity to apply these techniques. It’s more like drawing, but often there is no concrete plan at the beginning; I just start with a brush stroke and a simple colour scheme. In Seedhead, for instance, some parts are drawn on very quickly, aggressively, while others are misty, more pale. Such differences inside a painting can create an interesting experience of proportions changing, and time slowing down. [...]