Rakuko Naito @ The Mayor Gallery

Tadaaki Kuwayama and wife Rakuko Naito both studied at the Nihonga on a (modern Japanese-style painting) program; then living and working together throughout their impressive six-decade career.  In this exhibition, the intimacies of living and working together is explored.

Tadaaki Kuwayama’s work is characterised by “radical neutrality,” and since the early 1960s, he broke from existing modes of artistic expression in order to create neutral art; where the artist removes all the characteristics from a painting to so that you can no longer judge the painting with aesthetic conventions.

Naito began as a minimal Op artist experimenting with the Moire effect.  Introduced to acrylic paint she moved on to working with paper assemblages, to which she dedicated her artistic practice for the past three decades.  She works with kozo and mino washi; traditional Japanese papers which can be traced back to the Nara period in 8th century Japan.  Naito contrasts this strong-fibred, man-made material with the organic forms produced by tearing, rolling, folding, and burning the paper. A modern combination of drawing and sculpture, Naito plays with order and structure, strength and vulnerability.