March 25 - April 22, 2006

The Mitchell Algus Gallery presents an exhibition of paintings and drawings by Takeshi Kawashima opening on Saturday March 25 and continuing through Saturday April 22, 2006. A reception for the artist will be held on the day of the opening from 6 to 8 p.m.

The past decade has seen a serious effort to begin writing a history of art in, and coming out of, post-war Japan. Following current interest in younger Japanese art, the work of the Gutai and Yayoi Kusama has received notice. More recently, Takashi Murakami’s Little Boy exhibition at The Japan Society and a show of Atsuko Tanaka’s work at the Grey Art Gallery have provided a glimpse into the diversity of Japanese post-war art and helped define the socio-historical context in which it was made.

Takeshi Kawashima was born in Japan in 1930. In Tokyo in the 1950s he made paintings which were dense expressionistic accumulations of pictograms painted primarily in black and white. These demonstrated an interest in the European informel and Surrealism with a complex structured spontaneity related to the paintings of Georges Mathieu – who famously visited Japan in 1957 – and Giuseppe Capograssi. Kawashima exhibited his work in the distinctly avant-garde Yomiuri Independent Exhibitions in the early 1960s where it received exceptional attention. However, at this time much artistic activity centered around artists’ collectives – Gutai, Hi-Red Center – and in 1963 Kawashima’s independence led him to New York, which has been his primary residence ever since.

In New York, Kawashima further simplified his art, distilling it into elegantly colorful and suggestive pictograms organized into grids. As in Japan, Kawashima’s art was quickly recognized. Paintings were included in the Museum of Modern Art’s 1965 New Japanese Painting and Sculpture exhibition and entered the museum’s collection. Shows at the Waddell Gallery garnered reviews from John Canaday who found “each symbol...rich in variations, [with] ideas...brilliantly and concisely stylized and recombined.” After the Waddell Gallery closed in 1973 Kawashima’s art was less visible in New York, but he has maintained an active exhibition schedule in Japan where many works have entered into public and private collections.