The Green Gallery is pleased to announce Kaoru Arima, FAUST IN MARIENBAD by Rosen Green. This is the Miyagi-based artist’s third solo exhibition in the United States. On view will be three distinct bodies of work that represent an evolving trajectory in Arima’s practice. Foundational is the artist's formal investigation of portraiture and ways of seeing. We find this by way of Arima's negotiation of the face through direct and disembodied means.
FAUST IN MARIENBAD by Rosen Green features three early drawings. These works lay the groundwork for the artist’s formal investigation of the face as armature and structure. Overlaid and repeated linework feels lyrical, quietly dancing with delicate washes of the background. The dynamic between these two parts performs a subtle emotional tenor while breaking down the image of the face; becoming more spatial.
Paintings in this exhibition allow this logic to unfold. As the portrait becomes a form to hang marks on, the face appears hollow and mask-like. Structure here reveals artifice, a performative nature; yet these faces do not quite perform anything. The gaze of the eyes appears empty, occasionally becoming orifices, inviting us in but providing nowhere to go. The portrait does not point to someone specific, allowing focus to move beyond the face. We notice that marks approximate pixels and nod to the digital. They allow the viewer to consider the way in which we are constantly enmeshed in the virtual, and how a pixel of the face becomes one of millions on screen.
Arima’s painted faces seem to both come together and fall apart. They tell us what they are, yet open up to something more. We might consider how some passages denote a quality of atmosphere; others of rolling hills or sweeping rivers. The face could also be viewed topographically, mapping out an environment, as his directional marks sway the eye to and fro.
Recent work carries this thought into the landscape. These photographic prints on canvas deliberately misregister creating a central image that dissolves and is almost monochromatic. As Arima previously used the painted mark as pixel, these works see the (printed) pixel act as a paint. There is a genericness to the landscape in these images. Like the faces, they do not denote a specific site, rather a shell of an environment. In this way too, the landscape itself becomes a kind of mask, a neutral repeated form that echos rather than points.
The Green Gallery would like to thank Misako & Rosen for their assistance in coordinating this exhibition.
FAUST IN MARIENBAD by Rosen Green will open during gallery hours, 1-5pm on Friday, July 28th.