Justin Caguiat at Taka Ishii Gallery

Justin Caguiat b. 1989, Japan Follow +

After superb presentations with Modern Art in London in 2020 and 15 Orient in New York in 2018, Justin Caguiat‘s first solo exhibition with Taka Ishii Gallery will open in Tokyo on 27 March.

Running until 24 April 2021, the exhibition presents works created by the artist in 2020 in his signature earthy tones that blend across unstretched canvas.

Caguiat’s paintings have been described by critic Sophie Ruigrok as resembling ‘a primordial soup’, their literary references hidden amidst pools of colour and in their titles, allowing the paintings to reveal themselves to the viewer slowly.

This experience of subtle reveal is recounted by a friend of Caguiat’s named Th. Killian Roach, whose observations form the exhibition’s press release. Staying with the artist, Roach spent time observing the accumulated layers of a painting by Caguiat’s, noting how, ‘even in dim light the painting seemed irradiated by a strobe, the picture plane a twinkling low relief.’

Born in 1989, Caguiat is currently based between New York and Oakland. —[O]

WORKS

Main image: Justin Caguiat, Step to Enchantment (2020) (detail). Oil on canvas. 224 x 376 cm. © Justin Caguiat. Courtesy Taka Ishii Gallery.