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갤러리이배 수영전시관에서는 2019년 11월 8일부터 12월 22일까지 ‘Miyuki Yokomizo & Shingo Francis' 라는 전시제목으로 캔버스를 매개로 삶을 관조하는 두 작가 미유키 요코미조(Miyuki Yokomizo)와 싱고 프란시스(Shingo Francis)를 초대하여 그들이 선사하는 미학적 감동을 경험하고자 한다. 미유키 요코미조(Miyuki Yokomizo)는 유화물감으로 감싸인 실을 튕겨 캔버스에 반복적으로 쌓아 올리는 조각적 회화작업으로 주목받고 있으며, 싱고 프란시스(Shingo Francis)는 interference물감으로 캔버스 위에 재현한 빛과 색상의 미학으로 무와 실, 정과 동의 경계를 무너뜨린 초월적 자연을 표현한 창의적인 색면추상 작품들을 선보인다. 이번 전시에서 관람객들은 작가들의 삶이 회화로서 승화된 결과물을 통해 삶의 본질에 대한 의문에 답을 구하게 될 것이다.
설치미술가인 미유키 요코미조의 평면작품들은 3차원적 조각 작업을 2차원적 평면에 고스란히 담아낸 결과이다. 'Line'시리즈는 ‘조각적 회화 Sculptural Painting’로서, 유화물감을 얹은 실을 캔버스 양쪽 끝에 고정시킨 후 손가락으로 튕기며 그 흔적을 반복적으로 남기는 작업방식으로, 실의 장력, 튕기는 위치 및 강약, 물감의 점성 등을 면밀히 고려하며 작업한다. 화면에 직접적인 터치 없이 작품에 우연성과 불확실성을 부여하며 튕겨진 물감 사이의 틈과 교차된 선들은 수많은 행동과 시간의 축적들을 여실히 드러낸다. 완성한 결과물이 회화성을 띠는 것일 뿐, 실을 반복적으로 튕기는 단조로운 작업과 신체성을 강조한 행위자체는 깎고, 새기고, 두드려 작업하는 조각적 측면이 강하기 때문에 작가는 자신의 평면작품을 ‘그린다.’가 아닌 ‘조각한다.’라고 한다. 작가는 가시적인 기하학적 패턴보다 양적인 무한 반복적 행위가 더욱 본질적임을 강조하며 감상자로 하여금 “multiple-simplicity”의 의미와 감동을 느끼기를 바란다.
싱고 프란시스의 작업은 시공간성과 빛, 그리고 색의 결정체이다. 작가에게 색은 일종의 언어이자 세상과 소통의 수단이다. 그의 작품은 운모조각이 미세하게 포함된 interference물감을 여러 번 덧칠하여 만든 빛의 반사와 굴절 때문에 풍부한 색의 배열을 발산한다. 마치 무지개처럼 보는 사람의 움직임에 따라 생기는 시각에너지의 파동은 우리 눈에 도달하는 색들이 빛의 입자에 의해 매개된다는 인식을 확신하게 한다. 캔버스 위에 마스킹테이프로 구분한 공간에 색상을 대비시켜 작품에 또 다른 에너지를 불어넣는다. 현재를 나타내는 불투명 한 색깔의 얕은 정적이 있는 상단과 역사의 흐름을 표현하는 엷은 안료 유약이 흘러내리는 동적인 하단 간에 공간적 상호작용이 이루어져 실체가 없는 색면 공간으로 표현된다. 작가는 아버지이자 20세기 추상표현주의 대가 샘 프란시스(Sam Francis 1923-1994)로 부터 빛과 색에 대해 배웠다. 그는 "예술의 길로 자신을 이끈 사람은 아버지"라며, 유년기를 보낸 일본과 이후 미국에서의 생활이 자신의 작품이 미국 추상표현주의의 맥과 동양의 선사상(Zen)을 보여준다는 평가를 받는 이유라고 설명한다.
미유키 요코미조작가는 1968년 도쿄 출생으로, 타마미술대학 조각과를 졸업한 후 뉴욕에서 일본문부성 파견예술가 해외연수를 거쳐, 일본 국제예술연구센터에서 연구원으로 일했다. 2018년 대만 Art Issue Projects에서 열린 'Invisible Shape' 전을 비롯하여 약 20회의 개인전과 다수의 단체전 및 국제아트페어에 참가하였다. 사이타마현대미술관, 도쿄현대미술관, Snug Harbor Cultural Center, New House Center for Contemporary Art, Kawamura Memorial DIC Museum of Art 등 세계 유수의 미술관에 초대되어 전시하였으며, 이 외에도 D.U.M.B.O Art Under the Bridge Festival(New York), the Camouflash/Disappear in ART at Unoactu(Dresden), the Mediations Biennale(Poznan)에 참가하였다. 현재 일본을 대표하는 작가로서 교토에서 작품 활동을 하고 있으며 세계 전역에서 전시 및 작가활동을 이어가고 있다.
싱고 프란시스작가는 1969년 미국출생으로 1992년 Pitzer College과 Art Center College of Design에서 순수미술을 전공했다. 2019년 도쿄 MISA SHIN GALLERY에서의 전시를 비롯하여 1990년 이후 25여회의 개인전과 다수의 단체전 및 국제아트페어에 참가했다. 미국 텍사스 Martin 미술관을 비롯하여 일본 가루이자와 세존현대미술관, 독일 베를린 CFA갤러리, 샌프란시스코 미네소타거리프로젝트, 캘리포니아 로스앤젤레스의 일본재단 등 세계 유수미술관과 프로젝트에 초대되어 전시하였다. 그의 작품은 Banco de España, Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation, JP Morgan Chase Art Collection, Shinshindo Co. Ltd., MSGM 등 스페인과 일본, 미국 등 다수의 국가에 소장되어 있다. 현재 산타모니카, 로스앤젤레스, 요코하마를 오가며 작품 활동을 이어가고 있다.
Miyuki Yokomizo
Born in Tokyo, Japan
Lives and works in Kyoto, Japan
2005 Fellow Artist, International Research Center for The Arts
2001 Fellowship of Japanese Government Overseas Study Program for Arts, The Agency for Cultural Affairs
1994 BFA, Tama Art University, Tokyo
2019 “Untitled”, Art Office Ozasa, Kyoto
2019 “invisibility”, MARUEIDO JAPAN, Tokyo
2018 “Crossing points: A Scene of Light”, Marueido Japan, Tokyo
2018 "Crossing points: Weaving Cosmos with Strings”, Gallery Rin, Tokyo
2018 "Crossing points: Red Cage”, Art Office Ozasa,Kyoto
2018 “INVISIBLE SHAPE”, Art Issue Projects, Taipei
2018 “MIYUKI YOKOMIZO”, Noblesse Collection, Seoul
2017 “synchronicity”, 18th Street Arts Center, Los Angels
2017 “Ligt of Box/GRID”, Operation Table, Fukuoka
2017 “accumulation・”, Gallery Rin, Tokyo
2016 “accumulation・”, Art Office Ozasa, Kyoto
2015 “dwell”, ozasahayashi, Kyoto
2015 “in red”, gallery 77, Tokyo
2005 “invisibility”, Galerie Aube, Kyoto
2002 “Please Wash Away”, Snug Harbor Cultural Center, New house Center for Contemporary Art, New York
2002 “Blue – Sky, Air, Empty“, Park Tower Gallery, Tokyo
2000 “a scene of the respite”, Saison Art Program, Tokyo
2000 “Respite of Light”, Za Gallery, Tokyo
2000 “Please Wash Away”, Za Gallery, Yokohama
1999 “Green – Wander from Place to Place”, Sou Gallery, Tokyo
1998 “Raining”, Criterium 37, Contemporary Art Center Art Tower Mito, Ibaragi
1997 “Please Wash Away”, Gallery Q, Tokyo
1997 “Tranquility”, Akagi Kogen Gallery Move, gunma
1995 “Bath Room”, Gallery Q, Tokyo
2005~ 《now on world tour》“Passage to the Future:Art form a New Generation in Japan”
2019 “Gampuku”, Marueido Japan,Tokyo
2018 “Bae Sang-Sun and Miyuki Yokomizo: Circle of Life”, Lee & Bae,Busan
2018 “DIFFUSION”, MARUEIDO JAPAN
2017 “quintet Ⅲ”, Sonpo Japan Nipponkoa Museum of Art
2015 “floating figure”, ozasahayashi_project, Kyoto
2015 “Forest of Exponentials”, Paul Loya Gallery, Los Angels
2015 “INAUGURAL EXHIBITION”, ozasahayashi_kyoto, Kyoto
2013 “FACE 2013”, Sompo Japan Museum of Art, Tokyo
2013 “KYOTO STUDIO”, @KCUA, Kyoto City Unversity of Arts Art Gallery, Kyoto
2013 “KYOTO OPEN STUDIO 2013”, A.S.K, Kyoto
2012 “Rokko Meets Art 2012”, Rokko Hotel, Kobe
2012 “KYOTO OPEN STUDIO 2012”, A.S.K, Kyoto
2011 “KYOTO APERTO 2011”, A.S.K, Kyoto
2011 “multiple”, prinz, Kyoto “A flower and dragon on the operating table”, Operation Table, Fukuoka
2010 “Explore”, Tama University of Arts Museum, Tokyo
2008 “Mediations Biennale”, MONA INNER SPACES, Poznan, Poland
2008 “CAMOUFLASH/Disappear in ART”, Unoactu, Dresden, Germany
2007 “International Artists meeting”, CAMOUFLASH, Patio Art Center
2007 “The Academy of Humnities and Economics”, Lodz, Poland
2007 “Remembrance of things passing”, CASO, Osaka
2006 “DOMANI”, Sompo Japan, Museum of Art, Tokyo
2005 “Ma”, Nac Gallery, Novara, Itary
2004 “Conversation with Nature”, Aomori Comtemporary Art Center, Aomori
2004 “Chateau De La Napoule”, France
2003 “Bodies+Space”, Taipei Artist Village, Taipei,Taiwan
2003 “Purlorined Nature”, Kawamura Memorial DIC Museum of Art, Chiba
2002 “Slanting House”, Museume of Comtemporary Art Tokyom Tokyo
2002 “D.U.M.B.O Art Under the Bridge Festival”, Brooklyn, NY, USA
2002 “Art front/Waterfront~Site-Ations, The Staten Island North Shore”,
Snug Harbor Cultural Center, New house Center for Contemporary Art, NY, USA
2001 “Noriki Tokuda and Miyuki Yokomizo”, CAS Contemporary Art and Spirits, Osaka
2000 “Plastic Age, ART AND DESIGN”, The museum of Modern Art Saitama, Saitama
1998 “Subterranean-The Consciousness of the Inside”, Gallery NIKKO, Tokyo/td>
1998 “Samazama na me”, IBM-Kawasaki City Gallery, Kanagawa
1995 “The Whole Heart-1995”, Gallery Q, Tokyo
International Art Exhibition
2008 The Mediations Biennale（Poland）
2008 CAMOUFLASH/Disappearing in Art UNOACTU（Germany）
Residence/Grant
2017 18th Street Arts Center (Los Angels)
2007 Nomura Foudation
2005 International Research Center for the Arts
2004 Chateau De La Napoule, France Aomori Comtemporary Art Center, Aomori
2003 Taipei Artists Villagem Taipei, Taiwan
2001 The Agency for Cultural Affairs Snug Habor Cultural Center, NY USA
Collection
2016 with time, Four Seasons Hotel Kyoto, Kyoto
2014 invisibility 2014, SHIMADAZU, Kyoto, Kyoto
2014 Weave words, The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Kyoto, Kyoto
2012 invisibility 2012, THE PALACE HOTEL TOKYO, Tokyo
2011 Rain Drop, Domain, YAU TONG ESTATE, Yau Tong, Hong Kong
2009 Spatio Temporal, SkyperfecTV! Media Center Tokyo, Tokyo
2006 Raining, Azabu Daiichi Mansions, Tokyo
2005 Raining-Milky way, Kansai Medical University Hirakata Hospital, Osaka
2004 Please wash away, Japan Foundation
1991 Studio Art Centers International, Florence, Italy
1992 Bachelor of Fine Arts, Pitzer College, Claremont, CA, USA
2017 Master of Fine Arts, Art Center College of Design, CA, USA
2019 Subtle Impressions, MISA SHIN GALLERY, Tokyo, Japan
2019 Kaleidoscope: moments in time, Sam Francis Gallery at Croosroads School, Santa Monica,CA
2018 PAINTing, LA Artcore, Los Angeles, CA
Color and Shadow, K. Imperial Fine Art, San Francisco, CA
2017 Interference, Galerie Paris, Yokohama, Japan
2016 Silent Presence, Space bm, Seoul, South Korea
2016 Helios (curated by Koan Jeff Baysa), LAX Terminal 3, Los Angeles, CA
2015 Silent Color in Moving Light, Galerie Paris, Yokohama, Japan
2014 Vast and Vivid, MISA SHIN GALLERY, Tokyo, Japan
2014 Transcendence: a deeper sense of color, College of Art and Design, Yokohama, Japan
2013 Across the Line: a voyage into the void, GALERIE PARIS, Yokohama, Japan
2013 Kaleidoscope, The Durst Organization Lobby Gallery, New York, NY
2012 Bound for Eternity, The Bogart Salon, Brooklyn, NY
2011 Veils: a dialogue with the abyss, GALERIE PARIS, Yokohama, Japan
2009 Bound for Eternity, Montalvo Arts Center, Saratoga, CA
2009 The Depth of Silence, GALERIE PARIS, Yokohama, Japan
2008 Blue’s Silence: ashes in darkness, hino gallery, Tokyo, Japan
2007 Blue’s Silence: inner silence, GALERIE PARIS, Yokohama, Japan
2007 New Horizons, Elizabeth Stone Harper Gallery, Presbyterian College, Clinton, SC
2006 Exploring the Horizon: a new light, hino gallery, Tokyo, Japan
2006 Blue’s Silence: brighter shade of blue, GALERIE PARIS, Yokohama, Japan
2004 Blue’s Silence, hino gallery, Tokyo, Japan
2019 ART MACAO, Garden of Earthly Delights, Wynn Palace, Macao, China
2019 Emergence: the art and incarnation of Space, Martin Museum of Art, Waco, Texas
2019 Summer Destination, Schmalfuss Berlin Contemporary Art, Berlin, Germany
2019 The Hue, Kylin Gallery, Beverly Hills, CA
2019 Anthropocene: iBiennale MMXIX, Y Center for the Arts, Honolulu, HI
2019 Santa Monica: Now and Then, bgGallery, Santa Monica, CA
2018 21. Triennale Grenchen, Grenchen, Switzerland
2018 Layers of Nature: beyond the line, Sezon Museum of Modern Art, Karuizawa, Japan
2018 Liminal, JAUS, Los Angeles, CA
2018 United, Schmalfuss Contemporary Fine Art, Berlin, Germany
2018 Now You See it, Now You Don’t, Minnesota Street Projects, San Francisco, CA
2017 Julio Rondo X Shingo Francis, Berning Studios, Berlin, Germany
2017 Abracadabra of Drawing, Ichihara Lakeside Museum, Chiba, Japan
2016 The Limit of Imagination and Structure, Sezon Art Gallery, Tokyo
2016 Chromatic Passages, Japan Foundation, Los Angeles, CA
2015 Creative in Common, The de Saisset Museum at Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, CA
2015 Harkening Dusk and Light, K. Imperial Fine Art, San Francisco, CA
2013 Metropolis, Galerie Kornfeld, Bern, Switzerland
2013 Black And Blue, JAUS, Los Angeles, CA
2013 Working it Out, The Painting Center, NY
2013 Stronger than Fear is Hope, Schmalfuss Berlin Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin, Germany
2013 Celestial Dome, Brooklyn Art Space, Brooklyn, NY
2013 Liquid Pop, KOKI ARTS, Tokyo, Japan
2012 The Unseen Relationship: form and abstraction, Kawamura Memorial DIC Museum of Art,Chiba, Japan
2012 New World, Hahn Spielplatz, Seoul, South Korea
2011 A Space for Eternity, BankART Life III, Shinko Pier, Yokohama, Japan
2011 Places, Stephan Stoyonav Gallery, New York, NY
2011 Gateway Japan, Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, CA
2010 Elements of Nature, Contemporary Art Center, New Orleans, LI
2010 Mirrors of Continuous Change, Ilju & Seonhwa Gallery, Seoul, South Korea
2010 Ties over time: Japanese Artists and America, Residence of the U.S. Ambassador to Japan,Tokyo, Japan
2010 Across Dimensions, ISE Cultural Foundation, New York, NY
2009 Mescolare, Gallery 5, Long Island, NY
2009 Threshold, Ueno Town Art Museum, Former Sakamoto Elementary School, Tokyo, Japan
2009 Tsuzuki Art Project 2009, Yokohama Museum of History, Yokohama, Japan
2009 On the Shoulders of Davids, JAUS, Los Angeles, CA
2009 Artists of Creative City Yokohama, Yokohama CreativeCity Center, Yokohama, Japan
2008 Red, ZAIM, Yokohama, Japan
2008 Love to Party, Samuel Freeman Gallery, Santa Monica, CA
2008 To be looked at.., Larry Becker Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, PA
2007 ART X DANCE: artists from the Creative City Yokohama, Azamino Civic Gallery, Yokohama
2007 Land[e]scape, Onishi Gallery, New York
2007 Four Handed Lift, Moti Hasson Gallery, New York, NY
2007 Cabinet of Curious Ties, The Lab Gallery, New York, NY
2007 Vitamin W: Wonder Factor, City Without Walls, Newark, NJ
2006 GENSE Art Exhibition 2006, Kenninji Temple, Kyoto, Japan
2006 Cuatro, Sumi, New York, NY
2006 Chimaera, Tenri Cultural Institute, New York, NY
2005 Speakeasy, UPspace, Los Angeles, CA
2005 New 21st Century Exhibit (annual participation), GALERIE PARIS, Yokohama, Japan
2004 The Peekskill Project, Paramount Center for the Arts, Peekskill, NY
2004 Group Show, Robert Green Fine Arts, Mill Valley, CA
2004 Fresh Paint: Skeptics Touch Here, Cheryl Pelavin Fine Arts, New York, NY
2003 Take Art Collection, Spiral, Tokyo, Japan
2003 Tokyo Global Art 2003, O Museum, Tokyo, Japan
2003 Spiral Independent Creators Festival, Spiral, Tokyo, Japan
2003 Red on Red, Red Gallery, Savannah College of Art and Design, Savannah, GA
2001 Open House Exhibition, Garner Tullis, New York, NY
2000 Millennium Project, D5 Gallery, Santa Monica, CA
1999 The Painting Aesthetic, Long Fine Art, NY
1999 12 L.A. Artists, Coagula Art Projects, Los Angeles, CA
1999 Generations, Galerie Kornfeld, Bern, Switzerland
1998 Art Freeze, Simon Shade Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
1998 Three from the Hatch, Smith Andersen Gallery, Palo Alto, CA
1997 Selected Artists, Hatch Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
1995 Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Friends, Minna Street Gallery, San Francisco, CA
1993 Alumni Art Exhibit, Sam Francis Art Gallery at Crossroads School, Santa Monica, CA
1993 Group Show, 111 Minna Gallery, San Francisco, CA
Awards
2003 Fumio Nanjo Award (Deputy Director of the Mori Art Museum)
Artist Residencies
2014 Yokohama College of Art and Design, Kogane Studio, Yokohama, Japan
2013 BankART Studio NYK, Yokohama, Japan
2012 MARMA (Mitte’s artist in residency for modern art), Berlin, Germany
2010 Swing Space at Governors Island, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, New York, NY
2009 Lucas Artists Residency Program, Montalvo Arts Center, Saratoga, CA
2006 Omi International Arts Center, Ghent, NY
Public Collections
Banco de España, Madrid, Spain
Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation, Los Angeles, CA
JP Morgan Chase Art Collection, New York, NY
Liora Manné, New York, NY
Savanna (Commissioned by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council), New York, NY
Shinshindo Co., Ltd.,Kyoto, Japan
MSGM, Milan, Italy
Miyuki Yokomizo “ accumulation ”“Dialogue with Nothingness, Formed by Accumulation ・ ”
The World of Miyuki Yokomizo’s Sculptural Painting
It was about 15 years ago, in 2002, when I witnessed Miyuki Yokomizo's work for the first time. It was in the exhibition SAISON ART PROGRAM “Slanting House / Statements by the Artists in Japan since 9.11” at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo. She was exhibiting an installation of artificial, resinous soaps, which had been molded out of real soaps prior to being colored. The transparent feeling of colored soap, which is actually fake, wrapped the entire exhibition area and created an atmosphere of extradimensional space. At that time I was visiting more than 300 exhibitions per year, and most of the works have since faded from my memory. The installation of Yokomizo, however, seems to have been stored in the drawer of my memory such that I still remember it well.
The next time I encountered Yokomizo's work again was in 2005. Seeing her solo exhibition “Miyuki Yokomizo - invisibility -“ at the Galerie Aube of Kyoto University of Art and Design, I wrote the article “Art” in the cultural section of the Asahi Shimbun Osaka head office. There, she exhibited a huge installation of four items including photos and objects, contrasting the world of light and darkness. On the subject of my impression of this confrontation, I wrote, “In this beautiful space of light and darkness, it seems that space, time and light, which are the constituents of this world, are projected. She beautifully visualized the world of light and darkness, which encompasses this cosmic space.” What stood out as characteristic of Yokomizo’s work at that time was permeability and transparency in relation to light and space.
So far, Miyuki Yokomizo has worked as a sculptor and has been particular about time, space and light, excelling at installations. However, at this time, what she tackles is a two-dimensional work. Although two-dimensional artwork is generally thought to be a painting of sorts, Yokomizo declares that hers is a sculpture. Even though it is a two-dimensional work, it is one of matter; a painting created by this method of making sculptures will be a sculpture. In the case of Yokomizo, it is rather an act of accumulation; of stacking up rather than of painting. It is the point where countless horizontal and vertical lines intersect. A work with colored lines overlapping each other, forming a mesh surface that contains time and creates new space. On its surface, there is a feeling of trembling air. At first glance, the surface seems ascetic, but when you see it from a short distance, rises of splashing paints reveal themselves and the surface becomes expressive. The impression of the work changes, depending on the long or short span of distance between the viewer and the work.
Putting oil paint on a single thread and hand-flicking that thread fixes the paint on a support, such as a canvas or paper. The thread shows the horizontal and vertical, the warp and weft, and the painting is knitted almost such as in the process of hand-woven fabric. On the surface, marked with traces of time and action, there are surprising numbers of accumulated lines. The act of just flicking the thread is reminiscent of the act of a nun. When that act and her own physicality overlap each other and respond, time of nothingness spreads and wraps her. It is neither fixing the image, nor drawing. It is neither using the brush, nor touching the screen. The traces of the action, called ”dialogue with nothingness”, are formed by accumulating an enormous amount of time, which eventually becomes the artwork. Indeed: it is her breath.
When I saw these works, I had the impression that she is now transforming her installation artwork, which I had seen in the past, into reconstructed, two-dimensional forms. It seems to be an experimentation – an attempt – at visually understanding the relationship between space and time by replacing the relationship between the plane and time.
In this solo exhibition, by using the wall of the gallery as a support, there were splashes of paints and a vertical line on the wall, which shows a trace of one vertical thread from the ceiling to the floor. It is a glorious installation by using the space itself as a support, without relying on any existing rectangular supports. We can call these only five vertical lines and the splashes of paints the place or the space where the sculpture called “painting” stands. Recently, installations exist as “art of relationship”, and today it has become fashionable as experience-based, as participatory types of work or as interactions with audiences, but Yokomizo is not in favor of this, or rather, she realized that she cannot become familiar with the “art of relationship”. Probably because she wants to make her work complete and autonomous. In her work, there is a strength which prevents others from intervening into her own world. Firmly rooted in the earth, decidedly at her standing position, and being ready not to be shaken. On the other hand, it can be said that her own deep psychological world, which was unconsciously created, sprouts out. It is the sculptural painting world of Miyuki Yokomizo, confined by its materiality and time in the space of painting, which develops illusion.
A collection of paint spattered strips of masking tape hang on the wall of Shingo Francis’s studio in Culver City, Ca. remnants of a process that imposes order onto the untameable subjectivity of color. Masking tape allows Francis to paint the precise hard-edged line that orientates his canvases. Yet once removed and discarded, these straight edges quickly become twisted, curling up under the weight of the paint that lies in spattered dribbles and globules on their surface, transformed into a soft-edged shadow of their former selves.
These strips of masking tape are used to create the thin zip of color that runs along the bottom of Francis’s monochromatic canvases. This low horizon line introduces space, imposes order, defines above and below and energises the picture surface by introducing color relationships. Above the line there is the shallow stillness of a single, opaque hue, below, there is movement and spatial interplay as thin glazes of pigment flow across and drip down the canvas. Above there is only now, below there is history, as this subtle palimpsest of transparent paint exposes the passage of time. Just as the edge of a body helps to denote in and out, self and other, this line establishes a boundary that distinguishes and differentiates, separates and excludes.
Francis grew up and still lives in Los Angeles, surrounded by the vast horizons of the Ocean and desert and immersed in the intense light of the Southern Californian sun. As a young man he would sit on his surf board, out on the ocean, looking to the distant horizon, waiting for waves. If he was there at the end of the day, he would watch as the setting sun dissolved the solidity of the world, merging sea and sky into an amorphous being, which caused the horizon to vanish and with ita sense of solid, three dimensional space. In its place came a color space that was both deep and shallow, solid and insubstantial.
Sitting there, gazing at a myriad pinpricks of slowly dying light dancing on the ocean, Francis’s eyes would open wide with wonder, hungrily consuming all they could still see in the growing gloom,the individual colours merging and morphing into unifying darkness. Yet when our eyes open wide and our focus becomes narrower, we also become attuned to the vast, unfocused edges of our vision, those peripheral spaces where nothing is solid and we see through visual sensations, detecting movement rather than color, vague presence rather than specific form.
At the time Francis was growing up, Californian Space and Light artists such as Larry Bell, Robert Irwin, Craig Kauffman, Peter Alexander, Mary Corse and John McCracken [who he knew through his father the painter Sam Francis], were beginning to experiment with new materials and approaches to visual art. Light, Space, the human eye and sensory perception became both their materials and constant subject matter. Through their influence, and his own experiences on the ocean and in the desert, Francis became fascinated by the movement of light through the substance of space and was instinctively drawn to the edges of vision where we feel rather than see. Yet unlike earlier generations, Francis chose to use paint to incarnate light.
One of the aspects of the Light and Space movement that Francis wants his works to share, is the ability to offer the viewer an encounter with real presence rather than illusional representation. His large monochrome paintings shouldn’t be looked at from a distance as an art object, they demand to be experienced up close, slowly, on their terms, where they can engulf us with a single color, whose opaque presence at first seems solid and unyielding to our gaze. But then we notice a thin band of colour beneath us. Whether we see it as piercing opaque solidity or resting on the surface, this moment of interaction sends shivers up and down the canvas; a wave of visual energy that causes the picture surface to pulsate and gently vibrate. As our eyes open wide to capture these subtle sensations the periphery of our vision is teased by other movements around the edges, the dribbles and washes along the bottom, or a nebulous haze of luminous color dissolving solidity at the top. However much we want to lose ourselves in the welcoming embrace of purple, orange, red or blue, our eye cannot remain still, we are compelled to move backwards and forwards, across, up and down, in and through, probing at yielding flat color, whilst following the movement of the artist’s passing hand. As if looking across the ocean into the intense blue of sea and sky, we encounter both nothingness and substance, stillness and movement.
Recently, in his search for presence, Francis has begun to use Interference paints, containing microscopic flakes of mica. Because they both transmit and reflect light, they enable him to capture its transient, shifting character more easily than oil. Like the rainbow, their iridescent surfaces defy the names we usually attach to color. They resist boundaries, spinning lines of light across the surface, constantly changing character as we move. Instead of color stability they offer anonymous peripheral sensation, reaching out to us as we reach into them. As we stare at their centre, a line drawn just inside their edges pulls us out to their edges, where the color seems different and yet the same. Green becomes pink becomes purple becomes pink, becomes purple becomes green becomes blue. For a moment, the centre appears solid whilst the edges fall away, but then as our gaze is pulled back from the edge the centre disappears, melting into anonymous, pearlescent luminosity, where space is filled with light and light is filled with color.
Miyuki Yokomizo_Line F008.068.2019_38×45.5cm_Oil on canvas_2019
