Hiroe Komai + Colin Smith

Hiroe Komai

+

Colin Smith

6 February - 14 March 2020

Hiroe Komai

+

Colin Smith

6 February - 14 March 2020

JGM GALLERY Published on the occasion of the exhibition by JGM Gallery 24 Howie Street London SW11 4AY info@jgmgallery.com ISBN 978-1-9160585-4-5 © 2020 JGM Gallery and the artists All rights reserved

Scissors, 2013 Cast bronze 18 x 5 x 1cm Hiroe Komai

Ghent Wardrobe IV, 2019 Oil on Canvas 163 x 91cm Colin Smith

It is a great pleasure to present the work of Hiroe Komai and Colin Smith for this exhibition.

JGM Gallery are showing the work of two quite different artists in material approach, but with closer consideration, there is a synergy in Smith’s and Komai’s relationship to subject and specifically object.

In several of his recent paintings (2019) Colin has deliberately abstracted a series of works representing rows of bold, colourful fabric bolts. While retaining his signature colour palette and command of oil paint, the works have a luminescent patina. These more abstract works are a delightful diversion against Smith’s paintings of more detailed renderings of various, luscious items of clothing hanging in wardrobes that thrill the senses while retaining the essence of subject. Among my favourite paintings are the more monochromatic works of oversized and seemingly suspended overcoats and shirts.

Hiroe Komai is exhibiting a body of work she made in 2013. Her meticulous bronze renderings of everyday, utilitarian objects - tools and books, nails and pencils that Hiroe has used in her art practice over the years, and very much loved, have been immortalised in her distinctive life size works. The process and care in her approach make these monuments to her making and are an honouring of her artistic life.

Jennifer Guerrini Maraldi February 2020

In my studio there are very many different kinds of object, each having its own function or significance, and each made out of different materials. Together they form the environment which is my studio; and they are the elements which have inspired my series of bronzecastings. All of these objects have been used in the making of my art. Some of them I have had in my possession for years, and each of them has a story behind them.

The Moleskine Japanese Sketchbook is something I always have on me when I travel. The G-clamp is an essential tool for holding wood and paper when I need to cut it precisely to make sculpture or collage. The bent nail in a blob of Blu-Tack came about when I tapped a nail in badly, its gentle curve appealed to me so much I kept it, sticking it on the Blu-Tack so as not to lose it. The right-angle ruler I found in a DIY shop in the South of France - visiting the local DIY shop is one of the things I simply have to do whenever I travel abroad. Then there is the old hammer I found in a car boot sale in Berlin, and the English 15-centimetre ruler, which is of a perfect length for making my collage pieces. The calipers, which always remind me of William Blake’s ‘Ancient of Days’ except that mine are used to measure the thickness of Perspex to an accuracy of 0.1 millimetres when I make geometric sculptures.

All these objects might seem trivial, but each one has its own specialty, each is able to do highly delicate work. They are like members of a team. Some of them are always present and nothing begins without them: the pencils and rubbers, for example.

Over years I developed a deep respect for my tools, and the bronze casts I have made of them are monuments to them and their work. It took me months to painstakingly create the perfect duplicates of these mass-produced objects, which seems paradoxical, but at the same time commemorates the time the objects themselves spent in use, producing other art objects. Bronze craftsmanship is of course one of the oldest traditions in art, and now each of these humble tools has its trophy.

Hiroe Komai, London 2020

Blu-Tack/Nail, 2013 Cast Bronze 4 x 2 x 2cm Hiroe Komai

Ghent Columns I, 2019 Oil on Canvas 160 x 91cm Colin Smith

Material Culture ‘The scholarly analysis of material culture, which can include both human made and natural or altered objects, is called Material Culture Studies. It is an interdisciplinary field and methodology that tells of the relationships between people and their things: the making, history, preservation, and interpretation of objects.’ Wikipedia

The title of the broad range of my recent work is a somewhat corny punning one. The fact that the majority of the objects depicted are made of fabric or material has its origins simply in my early recognition of how the fluidity of paint lends itself to the depiction of the flow and drape of hanging fabric. Its origins are, consciously anyway, ones of sensual indulgence.

They are paintings first and foremost, their function is to seduce and hopefully, encourage examination or reflection later. The subject (or I prefer the term ‘object’) matter has other resonances which have relevance to the containment of human presence, or the lack of it.

The evocation of how garments can reflect the traits of their previous occupants is to some extent one of the concerns.

My career as an artist has extended from the dominance of Late Modernist reductive through to the present, which I suppose whilst we are in the midst, we must still call Pluralist. The certainties of Modernist thought at that time did not seem to offer enough space to operate, and I have always found the depiction and rendering of an illusion of space and volume something essential for my engagement with process. However Abstraction still stalks my corridors and like the horns and motors in T. S. Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’, always lurks behind me.

My most recent works with the conical ‘Columns’ in a very shallow space, clearly reduced from the more literal ‘Wardrobe’ series, are the closest I’ve come to making purely flat paintings. The rolls of fabric a mid point inspired perhaps by walking past the Turkish shops close to where I now live in Ghent. There are echoes of Leger and to some extent Richter, too. One of my friends at art school quoted someone, I don’t remember who, ‘No symbolism intended, None denied’

Colin Smith, Ghent 2020

Caliper, 2013 Cast Bronze 24 x 7 x 1cm Hiroe Komai

G-Clamp, 2013 Cast Bronze 15 x 8 x 4cm Hiroe Komai

The artist, as much as the viewer, is an outsider. Nowhere is this made more clear than in his paintings of open wardrobes, of women’s closets filled with racks of clothes.

On one level these are pure invention, and Smith has used the bunched and hanging garments, with their stripes and flowery patterns, flounces and drapes, as an excuse for a florid and exuberant abstraction. These are exercises in painterliness, derived as much from Delacroix and Manet as from Hopper, as much from Post-Impressionism as from Abstract Expressionism. At a certain point, the painter relinquishes control, lets the image go. He does not pretend to possess all its meanings. Instead, he leaves us haunted by our own imaginations, and his, of course, is a kind of trap.

The paintings might suggest a narrative, but there is none.

They suggest instead the weight of things, the indifference of the world, its ambiguities and resistance to our gaze. Š Adrian Searle, The Guardian

Small Wardrobe Study, 2019 Oil on Canvas 163 x 91cm Colin Smith

Moleskine Japanese Sketchbook, 2013 Cast Bronze 14 x 9 x 2cm Hiroe Komai

Titling these works simply as ‘Objects’, Komai’s decision to implement a matter of fact approach in their description, could be seen as an uberconceptual ‘end game’ strategy reminiscent of artists such as Joseph Kosuth’s ‘Meaning Paintings’ or On Kawara’s, ‘Date Painting’ series.

However, in this exhibition Komai places the crafted objects on perspex sheets and display methods reminiscent of high street stores, exploring notions of ‘taste’ and indicating the connection between high and low aesthetics and the reducibility of ideas not only to concepts but to ‘looks and style’.

Juan Bolivar writing about Komai’s work in 2013

Ghent Columns V, 2019 Oil on Canvas 198 x 122cm Colin Smith

Ghent Columns VI, 2019 Oil on Canvas 198 x 122cm Colin Smith

Double Sided Taper, 2013 Cast Bronze 14 x 12 x 2cm Hiroe Komai

Elastic Bands, 2013 Cast Bronze 7 x 6cm each Hiroe Komai

Untitled I, (detail) 2019 Oil on Canvas 122 x 168cm Colin Smith

Ghent Wardrobe V, 2019 Oil on Canvas 163 x 91cm Colin Smith

Untitled II, 2019 Oil on Canvas 168 x 122cm Colin Smith

Pencil B, 2013 Cast Bronze 17 x 1 x 1cm Hiroe Komai

Rubber B, 2013 Cast Bronze 4 x 2 x 1cm Hiroe Komai

Ghent Columns II, 2019 Oil on Canvas 160 x 91cm Colin Smith

Ghent Columns III, 2019 Oil on Canvas 160 x 91cm Colin Smith

Ghent Columns IV, 2019 Oil on Canvas 160 x 91cm Colin Smith

Screw/Plug, 2013 Cast Bronze 6 x 1 x 1cm Hiroe Komai

Wax Knife, 2013 Cast Bronze 13 x 1cm Hiroe Komai

Rubber B, 2013 Cast Bronze 4 x 2 x 1cm Hiroe Komai

Beckett’s Jacket, 2015 Oil on Canvas 173 x 122cm Colin Smith

Shirt, 2016 Oil on Canvas 153 x 102cm Colin Smith

Hammer, 2013 Cast Bronze 15 x 8 x 2cm Hiroe Komai

Right Angle Ruler, 2013 Cast Bronze 10 x 7 x 2cm each Hiroe Komai

Ghent Wardrobe VI, 2019 Oil on Canvas 163 x 91cm Colin Smith

Ghent Wardrobe VII, 2019 Oil on Canvas 163 x 91cm Colin Smith

Colin Smith

Lives and works in London and Belgium

Colin Smith is a British artist whose work is held in the permanent collections of many museums and important private collections around the world. In June 2018 he exhibited ‘Investigations of a Dog,’ a retrospective of his career to date at Alfred East Gallery, part of Kettering Museum. He also writes about art and has been a Harkness fellow to Yale University.

Collections

Tate Gallery Sharjah Museum and Art Gallery, Sharjah, UAE Frederick R Weisman Art Museum, University of Minnesota Museum of Modern Art,Tel Aviv. (Herrmann’s Bequest) Prudential plc, London J.R.Sainsbury plc London Peter and Mimi ,Haas, San Francisco Hutchinson Mainprice, London British Council, Buenos Aries NatWest Group, London Scottish Equitable, Edinburgh Royal Palm Hotel, Phoenix, Arizona Virgin Communications, London Wilmer, Cutler and Pickering, Berlin BML Corporate Management, Frankfurt

Arthur Anderson, Newcastle Amerivox Scandanavia, Stockholm The Duke and Duchess of Westminster Coopers Lybrand, London Hunting Group Plc British Airports Authority Kettering Art Gallery and Museum, Kettering Arthur Andersen, London EMI Worldwide, London British Standards Institute, London Pearl Development, London Contemporary Art Society, London Pepsi Cola, London Prudential Holborn, London Arts Council of Great Britain Unilever, London

Selected Bibliography Richard Wollheim, Essay for Solo Exhibition Catalogue, Adair Margo Gallery, El Paso,Texas, 1999 Sacha Craddock, Essay for Solo Exhibition Catalogue, Six Chapel Row,Bath, 1998 Adrian Searle, Essay for Solo Exhibition Catalogue, Arte x Arte ,Buenos Aries, 1996 Ralph Hermanns, Art after Thatcher, Dagans Industri, Stockholm, 5 March, 1996 Juliet Ash, The Aesthetics of Absence, Jim Dine and Colin Smith, National Conference of Art Historians, Victoria and Albert Museum, April, 1995 Donald Kuspit, Essay for Exhibition Catalogue, for Solo Gallery Three Zero, New York, 1993 Marina Vaizey, Essay for Exhibition Catalogue, Galleria di Serpenti, Rome, 1992 Marjorie Althorpe-Guyton, Essay for Solo Exhibition Catalogue, Anderson O’Day, March, 1991 Andrew Brighton, Essay for Solo Exhibition Catalogue, Nicola Jacobs Gallery, 1989 Antonio Del Guerico, Arte Dela Thatcher, Aventi Magazine, Rome, 1990 Marjorie Althorpe-Guyton, Colin Smith, Flash Art No. 134, May, 1987 Waldemar Januszczak, Colin Smith, The Guardian, December, 1984 Terence Mullaly, Spirit of New York: Colin Smith’s New Paintings, The Daily Telegraph, 11th Dec 1984 Marina Vaizey, Colin Smith, The Sunday Times, 9 December, 1984 Emmanuel Cooper, Colin Smith’s Paintings from New York, Time Out, London, November, 1984 Antonio Del Guerico, Essay for Exhibition Catalogue, Art Itinera, Rome, 1983 Michael Shepherd, Human Being: Alex Katz & Colin Smith, The Sunday Telegraph, 11th Dec 1982 Waldemar Januszczak, Colin Smith, The Guardian, 20 January, 1982

Hiroe Komai

Born in Kyoto Japan Lives and works in London

Education 2003 Goldsmiths College, University of London (MA in Fine Art) 2000 Camberwell Collage of Art (BA Sculpture and Ceramics, First Class Honours) 1993 Kyoto Seika University (BA Sculpture) Solo Exhibitions 2017 Visible Fractals 2, Coffee is My Cup of Tea, London 2016 Hiroe Komai Japanese Artist Lived and

Worked in Košice, Šopa Gallery, Slovakia

Naapurini / My Neighbours, Nature

Centre Ukko, Koli, Finland 2013 The Style, C&C Gallery, London 2012 Mirror Phase, Ganapati, London 2011 Visible Fractals, Slaughterhouse, Valencia, Spain 2010 Sunshine Hit Me, Gallery Haneusagi, Kyoto, Japan 2009 Modern Living, Shin-bi, Kyoto, Japan Selected Exhibitions 2020 The Collectors Room (Houdini), JGM Gallery, London 2019 Adazzle, JGM Gallery, London

Collision Drive 3, RMIT Uni, Melbourne, AU

Positions Berlin Art Fair, Flughaften Tempelhof, Berlin 2018 Pacific Breeze, White Conduit Projects, London

Positions Berlin Art Fair, Flughafen Tempelhof, Berlin 2017 Window Sill, Griffin Gallery, London

Flat Flag, White Conduit Projects, London 2015 Bonfire The Vanities, Display Gallery, London

Positions Berlin Art Fair, Arena Halle, Berlin

Double Agency, ArtKapsule At Koleksiyon, London

Doppelgänger, No Format, London

London Art Fair, London

Artist in Residency, Kolin Ryynänen, Koli, Finland

2014

2013

2011

Auction C&C Gallery, London A Union of Voices, Horatio Jr, London The Alpineum Minimale 2, Alpineum Produzentengalerie, Luzern, Switzerland Tod und Sterben - Death and Dying, MGA3, Vienna, Austria Art-Athina International Contemporary Art Fair of Athens, Athens, Greece Bite at the Air, Arthouse1, London Kit Shrines, Divus, London First Come First Saved, Lion & Lamb, London Offline Art Fair, Embassy Tea Gallery, London This-Here-Now, No Format, London Trajector Intermezzo-Rematch!, Hotel Bloom, Brussels, Belgium Six Degrees of Separation, Wimbledon Space, London The Thing is the Thing, ASC Gallery, London Preview Berlin, Tempelhof Airport, Berlin

Press One Art Platform, Hiroe Komai / The Style (26, April, 2013) The Japan Times (18, September, 2009) Karasuma Keizai Shinbun (Karasuma Finance) (4, Sep, 2009) Art Magazine ‘Cluster Issue 2 - Act 2’ (2008) Collections Komai’s work can be found in several National and International collections including the Gunnar Sachs collection, and in 2012 she completed a major public commission in Kyoto, Japan.

Hiroe Komai

+

Colin Smith

6 February - 14 March 2020

JGM GALLERY Screwdrivers (big / small), 2013 Cast bronze (big) 9 x 3 x 3cm / (small) 7 x 2 x 2cm Hiroe Komai

Hiroe Komai

+

Colin Smith

6 February - 14 March 2020