Par Art in the 30th Kyoto Art Festival 2016
Par Art, a private gallery in a renovated machiya (old Japanese house made in the Kyoto style), has started participating in the Kyoto Art Festival in recent years. A few artists who exhibit in the main group are selected for a show here but unlike the Annex and Kokokan, artists can sell their work at Par Art. Wendy Carroll, Deborah Stout, Minoru Masuda, Erika Kusumoto, Tomoko Yokota, and Wataru Kawashima were the lucky artists this year.
Outside Par Art, you can park your bicycle or drink some macha in a tea ceremony while seated on the bench covered in blue felt.
Minoru Masuda does these large pastel drawings. Some are abstract; some are almost lifelike reflections or pictures of flower petals scattered on the ground.
Erika Kusumoto is known for her bright abstracts. Having them mounted in a traditional style as a scroll makes sense since the show was in an old Japanese house complete with tatami mats and sliding doors.
Deborah Stout, an Australian artist residing outside of Kyoto City, continues her exploration with paper pulp. The lamps are good for traditional Japanese homes that do not have much wall space.
Tomoko Yokota’s sculptures take your breath away, some with beauty and some with creepiness. Did you see the spiny things that look like they form a trap or a spiky mouth?
Tomoko Yokota and Wataru Kawashima’s art together creates an interesting dialogue in the tatami room. Is that person beckoning you to enter the water or inviting you to your death by drowning?
Wataru Kawashima’s blurb in the catalogue says that the colour is added directly to the paper to create these ripples. Marbling perhaps?
Wendy Carroll is an Australian textile artist living in Kyoto. This is a sunny day as soon through a traditional Japanese sliding door, perhaps at a tea ceremony. She also had numerous silk scarves for sale.
If you have never been to Par Art, I highly recommend that you check it out.
That last piece, the textile is fabulous and I LOVE how the pieces mounted on scrolls look, but the woman either surfacing or descending in the tatami room with those large pieces in the background are INCREDIBLE. The first thing that came to my mind was the Rusalka.
From Wikipdia:
“It is accounted by most stories that the soul of a young woman who had died in or near a river or a lake would come back to haunt that waterway. This undead rusalka is not invariably malevolent, and would be allowed to die in peace if her death is avenged. Her main purpose is, however, to lure young men, seduced by either her looks or her voice, into the depths of said waterways where she would entangle their feet with her long red hair and submerge them. Her body would instantly become very slippery and not allow the victim to cling on to her body in order to reach the surface. She would then wait until the victim had drowned, or, on some occasions, tickle them to death, as she laughed…”