Ulterior Gallery opens a solo exhibition by the late Japanese artist Yasuo Ihara
The First Art Newspaper on the Net    Established in 1996 Friday, November 8, 2024


Ulterior Gallery opens a solo exhibition by the late Japanese artist Yasuo Ihara
Yasuo Ihara, Transformation Pills, 1993. ©Yasuo Ihara; Courtesy of Marrel Ihara and Ulterior Gallery, New York.



NEW YORK, NY.- Ulterior Gallery is presenting Explanation, a solo exhibition by the late Japanese artist Yasuo Ihara. From the time Ihara moved to the United States in 1963 until he passed away in 2010, his work was rarely shown. This is the first exhibition of his work in more than a decade.

Yasuo Ihara was born in Osaka in 1932. He began showing his abstract paintings in the mid 1950s at Kodo Bijutsu Kyokai (Kodo Art Association), a nationally known art organization. His paintings attracted much attention while he was still a student at Kwansei Gakuin University. Ihara graduated in 1955 and later established Chusho Sakka Shudan Tempo (Abstract Artists Group Tempo) with other young artists based in the Kansai area in 1962. Hirokazu Moriguchi, Masaya Sakamoto, and Ihara, who were already showing their work at Kodo Bijutsu Kyokai, converged and founded Tempo with Sadamu Kanki, Yasunobu Nakanishi, and Aine Kinashi, a member of the recently dissolved avant-garde Group Delta. Tempo received recognition as an artist group that first introduced elements of the Neo Dadaism and Pop Art of the United States into their work and exhibited it publicly in Japan.

Widely expected in Kansai to become one of the leading figures of the new generation of artists, Ihara was determined to move to New York, the center of avant-garde art in this era, and finally did so in December 1963. (Tempo dissolved around the same time, with Ihara’s colleagues Kinashi and Sakamoto joining Gutai Art Collective.) Although Ihara returned to Japan for two years between 1968 and 1970, Ihara lived in New York and continued making art until he passed away in 2010.

Ihara was originally a painter and was highly regarded as such in the Kansai art community. However, he began questioning the meaning of abstract painting soon after arriving in New York. He started experimenting with more direct forms of expression such as performance in the mid to late ‘60s, and presented the performance art pieces The Five Men at Judson Church in New York in 1964 and A Very Merry Un-Birthday at Osaka Art Center in Osaka in 1970. After such time-based forms of art, he began to engage with more conceptually structured works, including the series called Explanation. Explanation 1, on view in the gallery, has never before been exhibited publicly.

Ihara began conceiving Explanation 1 in 1971 and it took several years to complete. He used rubber latex to make a cast or “skin” of daily objects that he found around him and his family at home. These skins were placed in a Plexiglas box and sealed individually. While labels affixed to the boxes identify their contents—“TELEPHONE,” “BOTTLE OF COCA COLA,” “GARBAGE CAN,” “CANDLESTICK WITH CANDLE”—the crumpled latex molds bear little resemblance to what they originally encased. The forms are emptied out, largely immaterial, like the husks of insects or the discarded skins of snakes. Originally seventy-three boxes were included in this work, but Ihara later separated five elements and re-packaged them with one added unit. This group of six elements (“LOG,” “ITALIAN BREAD,” “CANTALOUPE,” “PUMPKIN,” “STONE,” “FACE OF HERMES”) is also on view in the gallery.

As an immigrant, Ihara lived and worked between two languages and cultures, and was little known as an artist in New York. His pursuit to create new artworks in his studio, alone in a foreign culture, forced him to critically examine the surface of things and the core reality beneath. Ihara’s interest was to expose the given conditions of his surroundings and question the essentials of the world he belonged to.

Also on view is Ihara’s Transformation Pills, 1993, a sculptural work in the form of a medicine shelf with sixteen bottles of various pills. Each bottle is labeled with a derogatory term for different races. The work suggests what Ihara’s reality might have been like and how he transmuted or “bottled” the everyday bigotry he witnessed or encountered.

After his move to New York, Ihara’s work was rarely shown publicly, even in Japan. In recent years, however, his work, and his position as a cross-cultural or “migrant” artist, has received renewed attention. In 2017 the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto acquired two of his works from the New York era. His work is also in the collection of the Takamatsu Museum of Art, Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art, Tokushima Modern Art Museum, and Osaka Prefecture. During his lifetime, Yasuo Ihara’s work was exhibited at Frederick Teuscher Gallery, New York, NY (1965); Judson Church, New York, NY (1966); Stony Brook University, New York, NY (1967); Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Modern Art, Kobe, Japan (1994), and several other venues in Japan. His newly acquired works at the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto are scheduled to be on view in 2018.










Today's News

December 16, 2017

Peru recovers 79 pre-Hispanic textiles from the Museum of Gothenburg in Sweden

Hayward Gallery Director Ralph Rugoff announced as the Curator of La Biennale di Venezia

United States returns to Lebanon relics stolen during civil war

Jade and gold burial suit, finest to survive ancient China, featured in Nelson-Atkins exhibition

National Air and Space Museum releases "VR Hangar" app

Infamous lock in US Watergate political scandal sells for $62,500

Art Institute receives outstanding endowment gift from Ruttenberg family

ARKEN invites visitors to step inside Ugo Rondinone's dreamscape inhabited by 45 lifelike clowns

Dee Dee Ramone Fender Precision Bass sells for more than $35,000

Trove of works on paper by sculptor Henry Moore joins The Huntington's collections

Ulterior Gallery opens a solo exhibition by the late Japanese artist Yasuo Ihara

World record for the oldest known and only surviving Japanese clock-driven celestial sphere in the world

Rebekah Beaulieu appointed Director of the Florence Griswold Museum

BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art displays a selection of recent paintings by Sofia Stevi

Claude Lalanne's record "Crocodile" bureau tops Sotheby's $26.4 million Design Auctions in New York

Artworks and personal effects from the estate of artist John Douglas Patrick will be sold online Jan. 15

Stedelijk Museum announces first exhibition of graphic designer Wim Crouwel in Japan

Gerard Byrne presents a new video installation at Kerlin Gallery

'Jewels of Time: Watches from the Proctor Collection' opens in Utica

New Orleans Museum of Art to break ground on six-acre expansion of sculpture garden

New exhibition series highlights global context of American portraiture

Weinstein Gallery celebrates 25th anniversary with the West Coast premiere of film by Oskar Fischinger

RM Sotheby's reports $526 million in global auction sales in 2017

Throckmorton Fine Art opens exhibition of photographs by Brazilian photographer Valdir Cruz




Museums, Exhibits, Artists, Milestones, Digital Art, Architecture, Photography,
Photographers, Special Photos, Special Reports, Featured Stories, Auctions, Art Fairs,
Anecdotes, Art Quiz, Education, Mythology, 3D Images, Last Week, .

 



Founder:
Ignacio Villarreal
(1941 - 2019)
Editor & Publisher: Jose Villarreal
Art Director: Juan José Sepúlveda Ramírez
Writer: Ofelia Zurbia Betancourt

Royalville Communications, Inc
produces:

ignaciovillarreal.org juncodelavega.com facundocabral-elfinal.org
Founder's Site. Hommage
to a Mexican poet.
Hommage
       

The First Art Newspaper on the Net. The Best Versions Of Ave Maria Song Junco de la Vega Site Ignacio Villarreal Site
Tell a Friend
Dear User, please complete the form below in order to recommend the Artdaily newsletter to someone you know.
Please complete all fields marked *.
Sending Mail
Sending Successful