Yuko Shiraishi explores color and space
Yuko Shiraishi’s 2009 work “Space Elevator Tea House” is on display at Kukje Gallery in central Seoul. / Courtesy of Kukje Gallery
By Kwon Mee-yoo
The world of Yuko Shiraishi, a Japanese artist based in London, is of color and space. She unravels it at a solo exhibition going on at Kukje Gallery in Samcheong-dong, central Seoul.
Titled “Space Space,” the exhibit sheds light on the 56-year-old artist’s endless pursuit of color and space, combined with architectural experiments and intuition. Her works “emphasizes the resonan ce between bodies of color and the relationship of the work to its surrounding space,” according to Kukje Gallery.
Shiraishi built a tea house in the gallery, named “Space Elevator Tea House.” The house does not have walls or pillars, but is composed of stainless steel poles. A column of light penetrates the center of the house, coming from the floor of the gallery to beyond the roof of the house. Installed in a separate room, the piece creates a serene mood.
This is Shiraishi’s interpretation of the space elevator featured in Arthur C. Clarke’s 1979 novel “The Foundations of Paradise.” In the book, Clarke suggests a transportation system on a rigid metal ribbon to come and go between earth and space.
She was inspired by a 17th century Japanese traditional tea house. The work is about the size of an actual four-and-a-half tatami mat room, as she considered the minimal size for a person to live in. She overlapped the architectural idea with her cosmic imagination.
“The ephemeral installation brilliantly captures the volume of an architectural form while remaining a meditation on light and space,” Kukje Gallery explained the work.
Though her works have a wide range, Shiraishi is primarily an abstract painter and she is presenting eight new paintings, which reflect her interest in color.
The paintings are basically color field abstracts in soft hues, consisting of basic elements of dots and lines. “Look Up” (2012), a dark blue ground with colorful dots, shows where the idea comes from — space. “Journey” (2011) and “Introduction” (2012) evoke infinity with horizontal lines. The lines are not straight as if drawn with a ruler, but are free drawn strokes.
She is also known for bigger projects such as “Canal Wall,” a colorful installation at Regent’s Canal in London in 2008. She “collected” colors for the project from the neighborhood to paint the walls of a marina near the canal.
Collecting colors is a part of her life as she thinks each is unique in each space. She found out even the color of chocolate is slightly different from country to country — German chocolates tend to have high brightness, while British ones are more murky and Japanese chocolates are somewhere in the middle. Such inspiration resonates with the lucid colors in her paintings.
The exhibit runs through Dec. 23. Admission is free. For more information, visit www.kukjegallery.com or call (02) 735-8449.