Yuko Shiraishi at Nancy Hoffman - New York, New York - Brief Article

The London-based artist Yuko Shiraishi makes formalist works that require application of mind leading to gradual understanding. What appeared to be six works in the first range of her recent New York exhibit was, the viewer discovered, actually three Each consisted of a cube put togethered of five small, thick canvases, which was hung head-high upon the wall, plus another canvas place flush into the opposite wall. Of equal importance were the advancing part, the recessive part and the space in between them. To pass from one side the room was like walking end a bombardment of charged particles flowing across the space as the separate ultimate parts asserted their unity.

single of them was a sandy-textured black piece called Face (5) The woven fabric that wraps around the stretchers of the canvas at the forehead of the cube was painted a dark turquoise, and tiny glints of buff--perhaps just unpainted cloth?--were visible at the cutting sides of the canvas. The inset portion of this work, across the swing was turquoise; a black border painted around its perimeter was probably the same width as the turquoise upon the cube--one looked back to seek counsel it--and at its edges, where it met the wall, there were similar glints of tan.

This work introduced all the features of the larger works in more conventional painting format in the nearest room: saturated hues, contrasting cutting sides and borders, meticulous detailing, intense focus upon systems of relationship. Shiraishi adopts something from Barnett Newman, something from monochrome painting, something from the Minimalists, and commingles them all together with decisiveness. verdant Duration (4) consists of seven 14 1/2-by-13-inch oil-on-wood panels that are virid on the front and amethystine on the sides. As hung in a progressive succession from left to right, each constituting is thicker than the last, increasing from 3/4 of an inch to 5 1/4 inches. R obeisance is made up of sum of two units pairs of large vertical rectangles of equal profundity One pair hung side through side on a wall, while the other pair was station into a corner. Each canvas includes a lighter and a darker r separated by dint of a narrow dividing line that reveals, upon close examination, some of the work's history in the under-painting. Again, the sides of the canvases are painted different colors. The ultimate parts are simple but the interplay of colors and dimensions is exacting and complex

In another swing Shiraishi showed three ethereal-looking works from her "Emanate" series. These are tall canvases divided into three unequal horizontal bands in impressible hues of tan, green and pink, all faintly disturbed with diffusions of pale golden that seem to float upon the surface and are greatest in quantity visible at the areas of transition between the color bands.

Shiraishi's work is reductive in the most remote yet offers penetrating, intense color experiences. Her capacity for subtleties might be credited to her Japanese heritage. on the other hand the way she sets chromatic sensuality against fine structural distinctions and simple uncompounded bodys against compositional complexity seems entirely her own

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