Dates: Jun 30 – Jul 28, 2012
Location: Taka Ishii Gallery (Kiyosumi, Tokyo)
Opening reception: Saturday, Jun 30, 18:00-20:00

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Taka Ishii Gallery is pleased to present Variety Show, an exhibition of new paintings by the Tokyo-based artist Tomoo Gokita, which will be on view from June 30 (Sat) to July 28 (Sat). Variety Show will be Gokita’s second exhibition at Taka Ishii Gallery since 2008.
Gokita’s work has been shown in numerous exhibitions in Japan and abroad. In 2012, his work was included in The Unseen Relationship: Form and Abstractionheld at the Kawamura Memorial DIC Museum of Art.

Gokita uses acrylic gouache to create uniquely even surfaces in his paintings. Together, the paintings’ palettes, from which all color excluding black and white have been removed, and abstract imagery, which nevertheless retain traces of representation, exude formidable power over their viewers.

The picture is in motion from the moment the eye turns into an ear.
For whom? For what? I don’t know.
I wait for “silliness” which lurks behind a kind of fermented unconscious, such as the act of eating a picture or putting a paintbrushe in one’s ear.
“Silliness,” however, doesn’t manifest itself so easily. It is a conundrum.
Regardless, to express pictures with words is silly.

Tomoo Gokita

Gokita’s unique attitude toward art production, which his use of “silliness” above illustrates, also straightforwardly communicates the pleasure he takes in painting. The dynamic manner in which Gokita paints his larger-than-life canvases brings vibrancy to his paintings, which powerfully draw their viewers into an idiosyncratic world.

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