Exhibition Dates
October 5 – November 1, 2007



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Anjin Abe  |  Emi Uchida

Onishi Gallery is proud to present Anjin Abe and Emi Uchida in a two-person show. The exhi­bi­tion unites two artists who begin their aes­thetic process in tra­di­tional tech­niques, and through unceas­ing exper­i­men­ta­tion, trans­late their tech­ni­cal skills into per­sonal lan­guages that bring a high level of aes­thetic expres­sion to mate­r­ial surfaces.

Born in Osaka, Japan in 1938, Anjin Abe stud­ied paint­ing and sculp­ture in his youth and con­tin­ues to cre­ate paint­ings, mixed media sculp­ture and ceram­ics. In the 1970s, Abe built his first kiln in Bizen and began to exper­i­ment with ceramic art to unlock the secrets of Momoyama Bizen pot­tery. Abe has exhib­ited his work exten­sively through­out Japan as well as Paris, Milan and New York in solo and group exhi­bi­tions. His work is rep­re­sented in pri­vate and pub­lic col­lec­tions, includ­ing the National Museum of Mod­ern Art in Kyoto and the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Museum of Art in New York. Abe’s work can be cat­e­go­rized as “Con­tem­po­rary col­ored Bizen.” As a result of con­stant exper­i­men­ta­tion, as well as mas­tery of his kiln, he cre­ates ceramic art that com­bines the sur­faces of tra­di­tional Bizen with mod­ern sen­si­bil­i­ties. Abe cre­ates a com­bi­na­tion of sur­face and form that is both con­tem­po­rary and rev­o­lu­tion­ary, and full of vitality.

Emi Uchida was born in Yamanashi, Japan in 1970. She stud­ied at Joshibi Junior Col­lege of Art and Design and received her degree in Fine Art in 1991. Until 2004, she worked as a designer in the fash­ion indus­try. From a very young age she stud­ied real­is­tic paint­ing tech­niques with estab­lished painter Mineko Ando. In 2005, she began explor­ing abstrac­tion, work­ing closely with Anjin Abe. Her well-received first solo exhi­bi­tion was in Japan at the Yamanashi Pre­fec­ture gallery in 2005. Uchida cre­ates inti­mate visual spaces within the tra­di­tional con­fines of the rec­tan­gle, cre­at­ing envi­ron­ments both nat­u­ral­is­tic and dream­like. Her beau­ti­ful painted sur­faces exhibit a dis­til­la­tion of tech­nique usu­ally reserved for more real­is­tic forms of expression.

Through sen­si­tive, per­sonal explo­rations and detailed tech­nique, Abe and Uchida cre­ate work that uncov­ers the pow­er­ful poten­tial of mate­r­ial surfaces.

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