Kansuke Fuji / Banana / 860 x 610 / Ippodo Gallery

I stumbled up the Ippodo Gallery today on 26th Street. A nice little space in the basement of the building that it shares with the Onishi Gallery. Kansuke Fuji’s work felt very still and serene. Strong negative shapes and visually pleasing surface geometry. While the work is representational, the pieces really move toward abstraction as the shapes and forms in themselves take on more importance than their identity as objects.
Kansuke Fujii @ Ippodo Gallery, 521 W. 26th Street, through July 3rd

Alastair Michie / Crows Nest / Acrylic on board / Shirley Crowther Contemporary Art

I am not familiar with Alastair Michie’s work, but after reading his obituary in today’s Guardian. I thought I would check it out. This piece has a wonderful palette and sense of rhythm. The composition and division of space is pleasing and draws me into the painting.

A visit to the Venice Biennale in 1962 dramatically changed Michie’s amb-itions and professional life. It was there he encountered the work of the great American abstract expressionists: the scale and sheer energy of Robert Motherwell, Franz Kline and Mark Rothko were decisive in him becoming a painter. He always maintained that he was never influenced by his mother’s work, though he shared something of her facility and strong feeling for colour and texture. His belief in the power of abstract art to convey strong emotions was confirmed by a meeting with Rothko at an exhibition of paintings by his friend John Plumb at the Axiom gallery in London in the late 1960s.

Michie’s abstract works, whether sculptures or paintings, were always influenced by his own experience. He believed that the two activities complemented and cross-fertilised each other, and much of his work, whether in two or three dimensions, is closely linked to the coastal landscape of his beloved Dorset. His abstract paintings can be read as images of land and sea viewed from the air. A favourite haunt, Studland beach, proved a rich source of found objects, including driftwood and wartime remnants such as shrapnel, which formed the basis of most of Michie’s sculpted pieces from the 1950s onwards. [Read More...]