"Katsuko Ishigaki : Tales of the Earth"
2003-07-22 until 2003-08-09
Gallery ART U
Osaka, , JP Japan

Katsuko Ishigaki was born in 1967 on Ishigaki Island, located in the south part of Ryukyu archipelago, which was still under American occupancy at that time. Since graduating from Okinawa prefectural University of Arts in Naha in 1991, she’s been following an artistic career as a painter while teaching art at high schools and municipal cultural centers for children.

Ishigaki’s canvas often apresent round-faced figures in mysterious gestures, which might evoke at a glance a scene from theatre absurde. In fact, these characters reflect her own experience in her daily life, relationship with her friends, family and pupils, or personify diverse feelings which contradict each other in her mind. Her palette of brilliant colors in a southerners sensibility adds another charm to her paintings.

Tales of the Earth, subject of exhibition this time, was originated from a sight of soil dug over which Ishigaki happened to see one day at a construction site in the suburb of Naha-city. Crude power she felt from the newly exposed earth. Life force it contains will make weed grow thick in a few days, and even after sealed up with concrete, the memory of the site will continue to exist by transforming itself into something like ki (energy spiritual drifting in the air)… Ishigaki gives to this essence of the earth a form of humorous human figures and makes them play an infinite pantomime.

At this exhibition will be on view a variety of her latest oil paintings and pastel drawings, as well as wood and paper clay sculptures. It would be our great pleasure if visitors feel as if they are strayed into a fairy-tail world, told by these residents of the earth.

ART U maintains a Gallery Portfolio at: http://galleries.absolutearts.com/galleries/artu.

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