Onishi Gallery

Writ­ing is a uni­ver­sal and pos­si­bly the ulti­mate way to express our­selves and to be under­stood by oth­ers. In Japan, cal­lig­ra­phy has been an essen­tial tool not only for com­mu­ni­ca­tion but for artis­tic expres­sion. Over the past 1000 years Japan­ese women from all walks of life have expressed their inner thoughts through cal­lig­ra­phy. In this show, BLACK AND WHITE, Kagami attempts to express can­didly her world-view from the per­spec­tive of a 26-year-old woman.

Kagami’s tech­niques are deeply rooted and under­pinned by tra­di­tional Japan­ese cal­lig­ra­phy. She, how­ever, is not lim­ited by tra­di­tion. She presents her cal­lig­ra­phy as paint­ings or musi­cal scores in their own right. The Chi­nese char­ac­ters, brush strokes, shades of black, and white space taken together con­vey her artis­tic vision. Kagami dynam­i­cally orches­trates these ele­ments with a Japan­ese brush to project her inner thoughts onto rice paper.

BLACK AND WHITE reflects the idea that light and shadow co-exist in one’s psy­che. The two oppos­ing aspects of a human being cap­ture Kagami’s artis­tic inter­est. This dual­ism expressed in black and white is cen­tral to the theme of the exhibition.

This is Kagami’s sec­ond solo show fol­lowed by Soul, which was also held at Onishi Gallery in 2009. She began prac­tic­ing cal­lig­ra­phy at the age of eight. Hav­ing grad­u­ated from Shikoku Uni­ver­sity, one of the few uni­ver­si­ties in Japan with a depart­ment spe­cial­iz­ing in cal­lig­ra­phy study, Kagami moved to New York for three years and show­cased her work in the U.S. for the first time in Young Japan­ese Cal­lig­ra­phers, a group show held at Onishi Gallery in 2007.