2018 Catalogue Archive

In her recent Impermanence series, Yukie Ishikawa reworks the surface of older paintings, altering the existing compositions with passages of color and line. She treats the surface not as an obsolete work to be destroyed or covered, but as a set of pre-existing conditions that she might respond to, creating new interactions of texture, layering, and movement within the work. The intricate, pulsating surface seen in Impermanence – The Season in Which Plants Bear New Leaves is due in part to the optical mixing that occurs when lines of different color are placed close together, not unlike dots of color used by Pointillist artists. Dynamic and complex, the work is a testament to Ishikawa’s use of past Modernist works as a jumping off point for a continued exploration of abstraction. Since the late 1980s, Ishikawa has had regular solo exhibitions in Japan, and her paintings are represented in the collections of the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art; Iwaki City Art Museum; Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura & Hayama; and National Museum of Art, Osaka, among others.