Ushio Shinohara

"Sparrow, " Acrylic Paint on Canvas - Abstract Boxing Painting

2018

This lively multimedia display features an enchanting field of color across canvas. The luminous washes of blue amidst loose figurative gestures evoke a buoyant atmosphere, while abs...

This simple, yet elegant, acrylic painting on un-stretched canvas represents an impressive display of the energy and attention to design with which Ushio Shinohara approaches his work. Born in Tokyo in 1932, Ushio Shinohara (nicknamed "Gyu-chan"), is a Japanese Neo-Dadaist artist who has lived and worked in the United States since 1969. Shinohara is well known for his boxing paintings - Shinohara's own style of action painting - which are made by dipping a pair of custom made boxing gloves into paint and unleashing his fists onto swathes of un-stretched canvas. Ushio works in several mediums including painting, printmaking, drawing and sculpture. In 1960 Ushio helped found the Neo-Dadaism Organizers. Their mission: deviate from any conventional form of art. Akin to European Dadaists, who’s art sought to reveal the customary and often repressive conventions of logical order and rationality, the Neo-Dadaism Organizers embodied a similar ethos. This can chiefly be seen in akushon, meaning “action”, which is the practice of emphasizing the human body as an artistic medium. For Ushio, this sensibility is encapsulated in what has become his personal trinity “be speedy, beautiful, and rhythmical.” Ushio's bright and frequently oversized work has exhibited at prestigious institutions internationally, including the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art; Centre Georges Pompidou; the Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Japan Society, New York; the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Busan; the Dallas Museum of Art and the Tate Modern, among others. Ushio Shinohara's work was included in International Pop, a landmark exhibition at the Walker Art Center that chronicles the global emergence of Pop art from the 1950s through the early 1970. In addition to an extensive exhibition history, Shinohara has also been a prolific performer — demonstrating the process of his boxing paintings live and in-person at various institutions. A selection of these performances include the National Museum of Art, Osaka; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; Austria Museum of Applied Art, Vienna; Busan Art Museum, South Korea; Musée d’Art Contemporain, Lyon; The State University of New York at Potsdam; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Dallas Museum of Art; and Carlton University, Ottawa. In addition to an extensive exhibition history, Ushio has also been a prolific performer — demonstrating the process of his boxing paintings live and in-person at various institutions. A selection of these performances include the National Museum of Art, Osaka; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; Austria Museum of Applied Art, Vienna; Busan Art Museum, South Korea; Musée d’Art Contemporain, Lyon; The State University of New York at Potsdam; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Dallas Museum of Art; and Carlton University, Ottawa. Ushio Shinohara "Black on Red – October...

Blue Abstract About the Artist: Julie Schumer, a native of Los Angeles, California, and born in 1954, lives and paints in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She discovered her love of abstract ...

This is a contemporary abstract painting by the New York/ Hawaiian artist, Debra Drexler. Vertical elongated forms in rose pink, mauve, lavender and turquoise blue rise over a layered field of cream white brushed with violet. Washes of red and orange fade into hot pink in this vibrant abstract painting by the artist. You can see the influence of tropical colors in this canvas and a wistful yearning for the beach and the sea. Debra Drexler is an American painter, installation artist, curator and professor. Her work is informed both by participating in the contemporary resurgence of abstraction coming out of New York, and by living in the Post Colonial Pacific since 1992. She has participated in over thirty solo and over 100 group exhibitions in national and international venues including Front Room Gallery, Exit Art, The Drawing Center, White Box-The Annex, Art Finance Partners, Van Der Plas Gallery, Sideshow Gallery, and Denise Bibro Gallery in New York, as well The Honolulu Museum of Art and Maui Arts and Cultural Center. Debra Drexler is a Professor at the University of Hawaii, where she is Chair of the Drawing and Painting Area. She maintains studios in Brooklyn, NY and on the island of Oahu in Hawai’i. Debra Drexler's most recent work is highly experimental large-scale abstract painting. In a recent review of a two-person exhibition (Whitehot Magazine,2017) Drexler's work as clearly referencing the long tradition of American abstraction and the established legacy of the New York School. The reviewer, Jonathan Goodman, described the work as a “new non-objectivity” that comes out of the current moment. He states that Drexler's painting “quite accurately describes the spirit of abstract art today, in which painting is struggling to break free of the constraints of time." Debra Drexler frequently uses hot pink, a color with heavily gendered associations. Her hot pink brushstrokes...