Hiroe Saeki

Exhibition

June 4 - July 2, 2005

Taka Ishii Gallery is pleased to announce Hiroe Saeki's debut solo exhibition with the gallery. Saeki first participated a group exhibition "invisible birds" at the gallery in 2004. Her drawings have received a considerable amount attention at international art fairs including The Armory Show, Frieze, London and Art Basel.

Whenever I talk to P chan (Saeki), it makes me want to draw a picture. Recently, I have been drawing pictures more and more. This is the influence she has had on me. Although I have known her for the past ten years, it was only a year and half ago that I saw her work for the first time. These works are strange yet pleasing. It is impossible to forget these images once you have encountered them, yet the details of these mysterious pictures elude your memory. Not knowing how they were drawn, the shadows of invisible living things / floating in the air/ that no one has seen in reality /
--- if you were told that these works were made by things being burned slowly into the paper then this is what they would have you believe. I really like who she is and her attitude towards the works and the making of them. To some extent, I am frightened to think that had I known about her work before finishing my own, I would have come up against an impassable wall, and might not have become an artist as a result.
Tabaimo

Exquisitely drawn objects with mechanical pencil : curious-shaped mushrooms, butterflies, leaves and insects wriggle in the drawings. Having expanded her approach, using colored pencils and white silhouette painted with acrylic, Saeki realized larger and more well-balanced compositions. Inspired by artists such as Jakuchu Ito, Georgia O'Keeffe and Isson Tanaka, her contemporary sense makes her works distinct and different from more conventional artists working in the medium of drawing.

#1 - #3
Hiroe Saeki
"Untitled", 2005,
Pencil, acrylic on paper, 82 x 179 cm (32 1/2 x 70 1/2 inches)
(Courtesy of Taka Ishii Gallery)