Bronze, 17.5 x 17.5 inches Yoshitomo Saito appalachia canvas In Yoshitomo Saito's seventh exhibition with Haines Gallery he presents us with a new body of work consisting of cast bronze canvases mounted on the wall reminiscent of minimalist painting's greatest including Agnes Martin, Brice Marden, and our own David Simpson. These striking objects investigate, in a similar manner as these painters, the nature of the artist's material. But instead of paint Saito creates distinctive surfaces of stunning variety through his impressive handling of bronze patinas. Throughout his career Saito has addressed bronze as a medium very differently than most traditional sculptors. Rather than "memorializing" or "preserving" a work through the use of this durable material he is interested in investigating the metal itself for its beauty and possibilities inherent in both the casting process and patinas. His depth of understanding and control over his material set him apart and gives him the necessary skills to create such intricate casts using the lost wax method. Unlike many artists Saito does all his own casting rather than send the work out to a foundry. Saito selected two different small canvases, one store bought and one hand-made, to make molds for this series. The artist states that "both had a sense of intimacy and possessed a tight surface tension because of their smaller frameworks. The result of turning them into bronze has started to show another kind of tension that comments on the essential issue of object making in art and its contradictory nature. In the stillness of bronze, the appalachia canvas goes back and forth with a phantom sense of compression and release like the unique soil of southeastern Ohio." The title of the exhibition references the influence of the rolling foothills of the Appalachia Mountains where Saito created this body of work. Originally from Tokyo, Yoshitomo Saito has lived and worked in the United States since 1983. He graduated from the California College of the Arts in 1987 and has been a member of the School of Art faculty at Ohio University since 2001. His sculptures have been included in many public collections including the de Young Museum in San Francisco, the Oakland Museum and the California College of the Arts. He was a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Visual Artists Fellowship Grant in 1993 and 1994. Exhibition: September 9 - October 30, 2004 Gallery Hours: Tue-Fri 10:30am - 5:30pm, Sat 10:30am - 5:00pm Haines Gallery also stays open until 7:30pm on the first Thursday of every month Haines Gallery 49 Geary Street, Suite 540 USA-San Francisco, CA 94108 Telephone +1 415 397-8114 Fax +1 415 397-8115 Email info@hainesgallery.com www.hainesgallery.com |
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