东画廊 | 外滩BFC艺术季 | Kumi Usui 展位A

Don Gallery will present Kumi’s recent works at BFC Art Festival. Her conceptual practice centers on everyday life and emotions. In the series of I’m Drawing & Drawing, she tries to return to the pure state by blurring the boundary between art and life when creating aimless paintings, questioning the meaning of drawing, the truth of life, and the connotation of self.

"Just as the Chinese society went through drastic changes and Chinese contemporary art started to connect to the rest of the world, Kumi Usui visited China for the first time. From Yokohama to Kobe to Shanghai, Kumi’s tour in China extended from a time-limited planned vacation to an indefinite period of study abroad, and later, the artist would find love, and a place of belonging here. Three decades later, Kumi lives and works in China. She speaks fluent Mandarin, and even Chongqing dialect. Just as she immersed herself in practice at the cram school so many years ago, she has immersed herself in painting countless abstract works, with her head bending down, she keeps on paining regardless of the boundaries and forget about causes and results. Her technique combines the gestural brushstrokes of Japanese calligraphy and the wandering style of Western abstract painting. Acrylic paint covers sheets and sheets of sketchbook sized paper. The works are varied. Some feature a few brushstrokes, and a smattering of canny points and lines. Others are dense and passionate — covering the entire sheets with a single color, often blue. Intuition is clearly in charge here, with many brushstrokes made almost unconsciously, but what lies behind the mental engineering that guides one’s intuition and instinct? This is the question that Kumi Usui meditates upon in her artistic practice -- the essence of life, and how to create art that returns to the origin of joy, motivation, and meaning."

Adapted from “Drawing and Drawing: Heading Out and Bending Down” by WANG Kaimei

九九 Kumi Usui，生于日本，毕业于东京武藏野美术大学，留学于四川美术学院油画系，现工作并生活于重庆。九九的创作主要涉纸本丙烯、综合材料绘画及装置。其创作观念创作实践围绕日常生活与情感展开，并在《埋头画画》系列作品中尝试模糊生命与绘画的边界，试图回到绘画的本质状态进行无目的性的绘画，审问绘画本身的意义、生活的意义与自我的意义。九九的作品曾在星汇当代美术馆（重庆，2020）、OCAT西安馆（西安，2016）等机构展出。她的个展包括“LIFE BOX 2020”（器空间，重庆，2020）、“师进滇/九九 双个展”（D空间，成都，2019）、“KUROE 黑绘”（艺术深圳，深圳，2016）和“线-没有答案”（器空间，重庆，2015）。

Kumi Usui (Born in Japan) graduated from Musashino Art University and Sichuan Art Institute, lives and works in Chongqing, Sichuan. Kumi Usui’s work involves acrylic on paper, painting with mixed media, and installation. Her conceptual practice centres on everyday life and emotions. In the series of I’m Drawing & Drawing, she tries to return to the pure state by blurring the boundary between art and life when creating aimless paintings, questioning the meaning of drawing, the truth of life, and the connotation of self. Kumi's work has been presented by The Galaxy Museum of Contemporary Art (Chongqing, 2020), OCAT Xi'an (Xi'an, 2016), etc. Her solo exhibitions include "LIFE BOX 2020" (Organhaus, Chongqing, 2020), "Shi jindian & Jiujiu Duplex Exhibition" (D Space, Chengdu, 2019), "KUROE" (Art Shenzheng, Shenzheng, 2016) and "Line-no answer" (Organhaus, Chongqing, 2015).