Current Exhibition

Press Release

Wakana Kimura

Journey to the West: Alien of Extraordinary Ability

Exhibition Dates Extended: Saturday, November 2nd – Saturday, December 21st, 2024

Reception: Saturday, November 2nd, 4:00 pm – 6:30 pm

Event:
Saturday, November 23rd at 1:00 pm

We’ve rescheduled the November 16th event in the gallery to November 23rd at 1:00 pm.

We hope you will join us as Wakana Kimura guides us through her exhibition. There’s a lot to talk about, and we look forward to your questions and thoughts. See you soon!!!

PATRICIA SWEETOW GALLERY is pleased to welcome Japanese artist Wakana Kimura in her first solo exhibition with the gallery, Journey to the West: Alien of Extraordinary Ability. We are also pleased to announce the late, but very welcome addition to the exhibition, Nobuhito Nishigawara. On view are thirteen extraordinary ceramic sculptures from his current series, Qualia.

The classic Chinese novel Journey to the West, attributed to Wu Cheng’en, is a tale of pilgrimage, hardship, and loss. It tells the story of the Buddhist monk Tang Sanzang, who travels West to gather sacred texts, encountering many challenges and enduring great suffering throughout their passage. Tang Sanzang is not alone on this pilgrimage; he has guardians to protect as well as demons to obstruct. This legendary tale parallels the 7th-century Buddhist monk Xuanzang, whose travels to the Western regions (India) took 17 years, resulting in a collection of original Sanskrit texts conveyed to China on the backs of scores of mules.

The title of Wakana Kimura’s exhibition Journey to the West: Alien of Extraordinary Ability offers homage to this extraordinary tale. Kimura presents a personal story, in pictorial majesty, of her journey West, but for her story, West is Los Angeles, California. In Kimura’s chronicling, her 17 year odyssey is of a young Japanese woman who leaves her culture and home, moves to Los Angeles, goes to school, works, lives, and learns the language and culture of a country and region unfamiliar to her. She receives a visa, then a green card, identifying her as an “Alien of Extraordinary Ability.” Metaphorically retracing the rewards and hardships of the Journey to the West, she blazes her future. Her demons and guardians are front and center in this exquisite body of paintings, not as a threat or regret but as a powerful reimagining, communicating her observations and Japanese heritage through vivid iconic symbols of her culture.

Kimura’s unique studio practice is an allegorical mash-up of East and West, with references to Japanese manga, anime, and Western graffiti cloaked in Buddhist figuration. She interprets Buddhist mythological characters from many cultures, mixing them in her loose, brushy drawings and paintings of mixed metaphors. Her contemporized figures are cloaked in hot colors, genderless, and exaggerated with distorted time lines and mismatched cultures. Her work also speaks of the migration of culture, as people sought safety from India to China, to Korea, and Japan; how cultural accommodation was shaped by the impact of multiple wars, dominated by warring patriarchies. Understanding the recondite paintings of Kimura is a journey through symbolic language.

On view in the exhibition will be Wakana Kimura’s Twelve General portraits mounted on scrolls by Master Hyogushi, Shosaku Yoshimura. Mr. Yoshimura is a third-generation hyogushi (master scroll and screen mounter), one of only a handful of hyogushi who are allowed to repair and restore Japanese national treasures. The collaboration between Mr. Yoshimura and Kimura is unique; he designed the scrolls for Kimura’s paintings because he valued her vision and liked the challenge of melding a centuries-old tradition with a contemporary artist’s vision.

The paintings are on Udagami paper, traditionally produced in Yoshino, Nara Prefecture, a type of pure mulberry paper containing white clay derived from crushed limestone found in the region. The white clay prevents transparency, repells insects, acts as an antioxidant (protection against burning), and maintains elasticity. Uda paper is recognized as the finest of Japanese papers, often used for the restoration of cultural properties. The scrolls are finished with layers of heavy silk brocade, with enameled wood, or gold plated rods at the top and bottom of the scroll.

Along with the stunning scrolls will be a large mural, LA Mandala, exhibited during the 2023 City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs Independent Master Artist Project (COLA) exhibition. We expect the 314-inch-wide painting, comprising four panels, to span the length of the gallery’s first exhibition room.

We’re also pleased to announce that Wakana Kimura’s select scroll paintings will be available in our booth at Untitled Art Fair in December 2024.

Wakana Kimura was born in 1978 in Izu, Shizuika, Japan. She lives and works in Los Angeles and Japan. She received her MFA from Otis College of Art and Design in 2011 and a BFA from Tokyo University of the Arts in 2002. Kimura is the recipient of the 2023 COLA Independent Artist Project, Los Angeles; the 2017-2020 Robertson Recreation Center mural from the Department of Cultural Affairs, Los Angeles; and in 2013, she received a commission from the Los Angeles Metro, Through the Eyes of the Artist. Museum exhibitions include RSVP Los Angeles: The Project Series at Pomona, Pomona College Museum of Art, Claremont; IMA, Hinokisoken, Museum Meiji-Mura, Aichi, Japan; and Invoke, Udatsu no Kogei Kan Museum, Fukui.

Event:
Saturday, November 23rd at 1:00 pm

We’ve rescheduled the November 16th event in the gallery to November 23rd at 1:00 pm.

We hope you will join us as Wakana Kimura guides us through her exhibition. There’s a lot to talk about, and we look forward to your questions and thoughts. See you soon!!!

Press Release

Nobuhito Nishigawara

Recent Ceramics

Exhibition Dates Extended: Saturday, November 2nd – Saturday, December 21st, 2024

Reception: Saturday, November 2nd, 4:00 pm – 6:30 pm

We are pleased to announce the late, but very welcome addition to the current exhibition, Nobuhito Nishigawara. On view are thirteen extraordinary ceramic sculptures from his current series, Qualia.

Drawing from his immigrant experience, Nobuhito Nishigawara hand-builds ceramic sculpture to release sensorial and emotional aspects of experience. The current series, Qualia, explores the dual cultural forces of Japan and North America that shape his relationship to identity. From his childhood in Japan to moving to North America to attend school as a young man, he recalls “suppressing emotions to fit in.” Through the complex gestural forms of his sculpture, Nishigawara offers himself a refined elegant conduit for all that is withheld.

Nobuhito Nishigawara was born in Nagoya, Japan in 1974. He currently holds the position of Professor and Head of Ceramics, Visual Arts Department, California State University, Fullerton. Recent exhibitions include Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, Los Angeles, and the Trophy Room, Los Angeles.