Kenjiro Okazaki
(1955)
A painter, architect, and sculptor, the creativity of Kenjiro Okazaki (岡崎 乾二郎), who was born in 1955 in Tokyo, has evolved freely in various genres and draws on various sources. A great connoisseur of art history, from the Renaissance to the present day, his abstract paintings are the fruit of a combination of his talent and erudition.
Constructed colour forms, painted in thick layers and in a transparent manner, stand out against white backgrounds. The marks applied to the white canvas, which have an immediate visual effect, are reminiscent of ideograms painted on paper. As in writing, a form enters into a dialogue with another and, when they are viewed, they interact with one another.
More than just abstract paintings, Okazaki works are poems about life⎯poems that we view with freedom and enchantment. His art is a veritable combination of writing and abstract painting.
Okazaki is also very active as a theoretician and critic, and is also the author and co-author of several books.
Personal exhibitions
—
2019-2020 2019 |
– Kenjiro Okazaki’s retrospective exhibition, Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, Japan – FIAC Paris , Blum and Poe Gallery, France |
2019 |
– Abstraction in Asia : From 1960 to Nowadays,China – Japan – Korea, Vazieux Art Gallery Paris |
2019 |
– Parergon: Japanese Art of the 1980s and 1990s, Blum and Poe, LA, USA |
2002 |
– Participated as an artist in and director of the Japanese Pavilion at the Venice biennale, Italy |
1994-1995 |
– Japanese Art After 1945: Scream Against The Sky, Guggenheim Museum Soho, New York, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art |
1989 |
– Europaria 89 – Exhibition of Contemporary Japanese Art, S.M.A.K., Museum of Contemporary Art, Ghent, Belgium |
Public exhibitions
—– National Museum of Modern ART, Tokyo, Japan
– Contemporary Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan
– Ohara Art Museum, Kurashiki, Japan
– Osaka Museum of Modern Art, Japan
– Hyō go District Art Museum, Japan
– Toyama, Modern Art Museum Japan
– Setagaya Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan
– National Museum of Art, Osaka, Japan
– Contemporary Art Museum, Hiroshima, Japan
– Takamatsu Art Museum, Kagawa, Japan Benesse
– Art Site Naoshima, Japan
– Aichi Disctrict Art Museum, Japan
– Toyota Municipal Museum, Japan