The translucent skin that supports the illusion -
Exhibition of the latest Squeegee paintings, following the completion of Project Periods, which examined and reconstructed nearly 50 years of Kimura’s work (*1).
From the 1970s to the present, Hideki Kimura has been one of the leading artists in the field of contemporary printmaking and has been active as a painter in Japan and abroad. Kimura's first project with Nomart (*2) was to create a catalogue raisonné and a portfolio of his prints and since then the two have been working closely together producing works and holding exhibitions. From 2015, Kimura held seven exhibitions over a four-year period as a project to gain an overview of his career as well as creating new works of art (*1).
This exhibition will bring together Kimura’s recent and latest acrylic “Squeegeeing”(*3) works on canvas which he has been working on since around 2018 when the aforementioned project reached its final round.
Kimura focuses on the ambiguity of things, and to add reality to the senses that lie in between, he layers a translucent skin over the grid. The skin, which straddles the line between 2D and 3D, supports the three-dimensional image in the jet-black surface, while at the same time appealing to the eye in an ambiguous way.
Although primarily focusing on printmaking, Hideki Kimura has challenged himself with new methods of expressions in each time period without restricting himself to a certain field of art. For nearly 50 years since completing his post graduate course of Kyoto Municipal University of Art, oil painting department in 1973, Kimura has been moving forward in his search for new horizons, and we invite you to witness his current position with your own eyes.
(*1)
"Hideki Kimura: Project Periods 2015-2018" at Gallery Nomart, 2015 - 2018
In the four years from 2015 to 2018, a total of seven exhibitions (Period) were held to give a statistical overview of Kimura's works from the early 1970s to the latest. The attempt of this project was to trace the itinerary of Kimura's thinking and to explore its appeal.
(*2)
Established in 1989 as “Nomart Editions for silkscreen printing”
(*3)
A coined word which combines “squeegee”, a tool used in screen printing, and “-ing”. He uses a handmade squeegee with roller characteristics to fix a layer of acrylic paint on the canvas.
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[Artist Statement]
Solo exhibition - Skin Unit-
This exhibition features 12 new works (created between 2017 and 2020) from my series of paintings using acrylic paint and Squeegeeing.
The translucent, non-glossy, milky-white coat created by masking the canvas and then squeegeeing over it is called "Skin Unit" and can be considered as a single modeling unit. Each coat is a transparent medium that looks like a rectangular cutout of a stream of water. I use a 3D software to create various shapes with a chamfering structure, output them to 2D, and then fill in the surfaces with the “Skin Unit”. The reason why the shapes are designed with a chamfering structure is because it is premised to be built with the "Skin Unit". Although having a subtle figurative quality, the structure is in an ambiguous from that cannot be identified as such. It is a temporary structure to prevent the "Skin Unit" from collapsing.
![](javascript:chImg('0','/fmimg/exh_img/img_512/003904.jpg','"Fall Maker 5" squeegeeing acrylic on canvas, 125 x 180 cm, 2019'))
![](javascript:chImg('1','/fmimg/exh_img/img_512/003927.jpg','"December Twisted" squeegeeing acrylic on canvas, 110 x 110 cm, 2017'))
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