Masahiko Kuwahara

Land Development

浄化ー新しい街 Depuration -New Town 2005 oil on canvas 116.7 × 91.0 cm ©Masahiko Kuwahara

【Introduction】

A part of the change of Kuwahara’s work can be traced by looking back on his three exhibitions up to the present.
1997 the exhibition of “Abandoned Child”, paintings of mysterious animals were exhibited. These paintings look kitsch like the stuffed animal piled up with the freebies of the game center. Coloring of these paintings are contained an artificial mephitis. The characters of the painting are consumed as unnamed rather than it was loved people, and drifted melancholy destining to be thrown away.
In The exhibition “View” in 1999, some sculptures were exhibited with paintings. The color changes into a light tone, and animals’ outlines seem to grow dim than before. Moreover it is seen the one like the background of a subfusc puddle where the industrial effluent is associated. The sculpture is made of the white clay and the bunch of the hair is buried in some places of the form like the collapsed lump of fresh. In 2001 the exhibition “Life and Pus”, girl’s nude and an abstract landscape were exhibited in addition to the sculpture works. The stirred expression is floating on the girl’s faces but a sensual message is not given directly. The landscape of the painting like only the background’s being extracted and this can be seen as a beautiful flower field of equinoctial week world or the organic cell and the body fluid seem to begin to blot.
The one consistently expressed in Kuwahara’s work is a dark desire to whirl in contemporary society and emptiness to soak the body in this age. The title of this exhibition of “Land Development” is to mean ruin, break to tell the truth in the origin of the name of development.

【Concept】

The meaning of the message and the story to be doubted at the present period, Kuwahara’s work seems to refuse the words and all motifs exist as dry scenery. Kuwahara says, “I want to draw a part of this world that overflows with a strange idea” The air that the work depicts has been filled with a peculiar distance feeling, common sense and the common opinion that to be twisted. There are nearly 20 paintings with big and small sizes for this exhibition.