Arisa Kumagai “Single bed”
I visited Arisa Kumagai’s solo exhibition “Single bed.” The venue is Gallery Koyanagi.
Arisa Kumagai is a young female artist who completed her studies at Kyoto University of Art and Design in 2015.
I was not familiar with Arisa Kumagai before, but a collector I know had been raving about her since before the exhibition, and that became my motivation to visit.
I was also drawn in by the strikingly powerful statement text. It is very compelling writing.
Single bed
My father died alone. Winter had passed and it had already become spring by the time it was reported in the local newspaper. It took two months to confirm that it was my father. He was still in his 50s.
There was no funeral. Afterward, I was the only one who went directly to his family home; my mother offered him only a large bouquet of flowers. Recent memorial flowers are so gorgeous and beautiful that they hardly seem like offerings.
Ever since then, I keep thinking about those beautiful flowers my mother offered.
The way people inevitably come to love or hate one another, the maddening loneliness, the solitude that is so hard to let go of.
Sleep, they say, is a small death. Today too, I sleep in my own single bed.Arisa Kumagai
The work that draws the most attention in the venue is the nearly 2-meter-tall major piece “Single bed.”
The artist actually measured the size of a single bed and had the panel custom-built to those dimensions.
©Arisa Kumagai / Courtesy of Gallery Koyanagi
The works on view take as their motifs Arisa Kumagai’s family and fragments of the life she has lived.
Together with the events described in her statement, they express the universal workings of human life.
Overwhelming Expressive Power
Many of Arisa Kumagai’s works place people at the center of focus, yet she does not directly depict their faces, so one cannot read their expressions.
On the other hand, her pictorial skill in rendering materials and details is highly refined, and her strong compositional sense conveys a real sense of depth.
A key point that gives her work its depth is the complex chromatic quality of the black that Arisa Kumagai creates.
She does not use any black paint at all — the black is expressed through a process of layering many transparent pigments.
The black shifts in complex ways depending on where the viewer stands. It can only truly be appreciated in person, but the expressive power of that lustrous “black” is a must-see.
The high level of pictorial skill mentioned above is immediately evident in the mesmerizing textures of skin and clothing.
The paintings are rendered so carefully that one cannot even sense the brushstrokes, drawing the viewer close to the work.
It seems the works on view sold out on the opening day.
She does not appear to be a prolific artist, and going forward it will likely become increasingly difficult to acquire her work.
I was fortunate enough to speak with Ms. Kumagai in person.
The precise choice of words when she spoke about her work, and her soft, composed manner of speaking, left a strong impression.
She is an artist whose future activity is much anticipated. I look forward to following her career.
