A Thousand Plateaus Art Space at The Temple House is honoured to open the solo exhibition of artist Kumi Usui Ai Yo in December 11th 2016 and present her most recent paintings and installation works on the theme of Love and Line.
Kumi Usui graduated from the Department of Oil Painting in Tokyo Musashino Art University in 1992, then she studied in the Sichuan Fine Art Institute. After graduation, she chose to settle down in China. Now she has been living and working more than 20 years in Chongqing, completely like a local resident into the society. In addition to the 'Line' series, her recent high-profile works, Kumi Usui also created flexible works, which all run through her attitude about persistence and independent thinking. Her unique identity and life experience are not directly reflected in these works, but turned into a spiritual harmony and thinking habit–this habit is presented in her works, to become fully emotional and unconstrained style images, including the active fantasy, yet elegant and delicate.
The creation of Kumi Usui uses lines as the basic elements, constantly changing and expanding, just like her infinite thoughts: she thinks deeply lots of things, like breeding, spreading, erosion, crack, collapse, termination, re-origin, life, the Earth, the Universe, DNA, mindless creatures, instinct, environment, situation, regularity, speed of life, creativity and non-creativity, the daily life that has nothing to do and anti-desire ... All of these prove to be vitality itself which makes lines can dance up in paintings.
Kumi Usui said: 'these years I have drawn some long scroll paintings. When there is a space to display, I cannot help utilising that space to say something with the forms of works ... My works seems to be different every time, but their directions are concerned about the human beings, life, earth, and other related stuffs, which are regarded as serious and ridiculous grand proposition. 'Thinking' occupies most of my life, and I always do my best to think deeply. I want to spend my life time on closing the 'art' as much as possible–the practice of art. I want to set up a relationship between my art practice and the experience as well as process according to my thinking regardless useful or useless, limited knowledge, live and play, time and situation, individual and others experience, self-understanding, understanding of the world, understanding of life, sympathy, compassion, awareness, responsibility and human nature.
Kumi Usui’s works did not continue the road of conceptual art, but from the heart and inner feelings. It will make the self-discovery and world exploration become one unity, like the Song Dynasty philosopher Lu Jiuyuan's words: 'The heart is the universe'. This will provide a very valuable visual template for Chinese contemporary art.
Press release courtesy A Thousand Plateaus Art Space.
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