By Erica Snow
An exploration of "floating," "boundaries," "the center," "light," "movement". A vibrant explosion of golds, yellows, and softly diluted oranges. The power of a delicate, energetic line. From November 16th through the 30th, Katsura Okada's latest body of work, an exhibit entitled "ZEST" filled Broadway gallery with its luminous rays.
"I draw my inspiration from all experiences - happiness, sadness, anger, pain, beauty and ugliness are all influences on my work and mature my mind, to be expressed perhaps ten years later," says Okada. The works in the exhibition are evidence of Okada's expansion of line, space and most importantly, color palette. These markings vibrate with life, glimmer and dance off the wall. Her lines stretch beyond the boundary of the sphere, visibly exploring what was once negative space. In these drawings, that space is filled with the light and passion of the golden yellow that underwrites her palette. With the show's title, "Zest", Okada references the persistent feelings of hope, which are synergized with reality in the radiant drawings. Okada comments on the creative process behind this latest addition to her growing body of work: "It is the realization" of "experience that provides the original and individual expression."
Katsura focuses on the ways in which we experience emotion, with all of our chaotic, passionate contradictions. The power of her works, be they drawings, paintings, prints or even sculpture, exists in the clarity of her gesture, the simultaneous grace and strength with which it was executed. Okada makes the simple motion of the brush stroke come alive on a simple piece of rice paper sometimes look as though they are resurrected from a time that has long passed and yet imbued with a magic and immediacy of the present. Tobias Hartmann observes that "her style of painting is completely 'line-based'. She experiments with a variety of different strengths of the line to convey emotions like anger and anxiety, but also positive feelings like love and peace. Even an untrained eye can detect these sensibilities if one tries to look 'between the lines.'"
In Okada's work, the connection between the motion of her gesture and the emotion of the work is fiery and expressionistic, but not too abstract as to elude the viewer. Hartmann notes, motion and emotion have been expressed with the same word in a number of languages, such as Renaissance Italian. "Okada creates a timeless moment in this contrast between the static nature of her chosen medium and the spreading, living lines that light across her paintings." Both motion and emotion share attributes-- the stirring, the burning drive. The illusion of movement in her frames is not polluted by the distracting frenzy of entropic decay. We see and feel Okada's hand at work: the contrast between the work we are viewing and the process whereby her movements, lines, were produced. Okada explores "permanent motion" and when one encounters one of her works, these words are no longer a contradiction.
Okada also works to capture the life and beauty of motion in her three-dimensional works. On a platform stand dozens of tightly rolled sheets of rice paper, tips and ends brightly colored; they stand on their ends, arranged concentrically like a new flora. Okada notes, each of her "Scrollworks" is not "merely a 'Picture Scroll' of ancient artwork, and not merely a "Scroll Work" (a swirl ornament and a cloud shape pattern)." Each scroll, with its super saturated, dripping hues, pulls the ancient tradition of Picture Scrolls to the 21st century; in their circular configurations, the scrolls seem to swirl and glow, not simply as ornaments but as a living, moving entity, a song.
Katsura Okada was born in Tokyo, Japan. She completed her degree at the Tokyo Metropolitan School of Arts and Music, and also attended Sohkei College of Fine arts and the Tokyo Academy of Calligraphy Arts. Since 1990, her work has been shown in numerous international and solo exhibitions, including Italy, France, Japan, Spain, Slovenia and Canada. Her subtly abstracted still lifes have received a first prize from the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum and the SoHo Art Competition in New York. As she travels, her work evolves, naturally, and her line expands, gradually. Ever attentive to the world around her, Katsura Okada's unique touch makes every piece charged with the zest of life, a grace, elegance and charm that bewitches every viewer.
Additional information about the artist is available at www.geocities.com/kostudio2001.
