Kenji Yoshida: Supreme Beauty

The October Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition by the late Kenji Yoshida (1924-2009). In 2007, Yoshida said ‘Life brightens most when peace occurs. Peace is supreme beauty’ and this constantly repeated idea suffuses his art. This exhibition will display selected and previously unseen works from different periods of the artist’s career. His first years after moving to Paris in 1964 to work with Stanley Hayter are best characterized by his subtle and graceful etchings, varying from elementary shapes to delicate and intricate motifs against dark backgrounds. In the oil on paper works from the ‘70s and ‘80s, Yoshida experimented with irregular forms and muted colours merging imperceptibly into one another.

However, this exhibition will focus primarily on Yoshida’s later paintings in which gold and silver are dynamically applied upon contrasting fields of bright colours and black grounds. Stunning multi-panelled pieces remember, in their sheer size, traditional Japanese lacquer screens and their exquisite deployment of gold and silver leaf. Yoshida’s work reflects the Japanese aesthetic ideals of wabi and sabi, a mindful approach to everyday life, which accepts that beauty is transient, imperfect and always incomplete.

Yoshida’s abstract compositions of interacting and complementary elements can be seen as formal explorations reminiscent either of earthly landscapes or of cosmic spheres. His canvasses quietly overwhelm the viewer in their profound contemplation of a serene beauty that celebrates nothing less than Sei-mei, the intense power of Life, itself.