Ko Kirk Yamahira’s exhibit opens at Deluge on Friday, March 8 (photo provided).<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\nYamahira unweaves his canvases with fingers, scissors, and an X-Acto knife; the carefully separated threads hang in delicate loops between unmolested sections of canvas. Yamahira\u2019s works blur the line between 2D and 3D; like Lucio Fontana, a painter who began, in 1949, to inflict carefully executed holes and slashes in his canvases, Yamahira is on the verge of sculpture. The work is often described as minimalist.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSome people say that,\u201d he says. \u201cI mean, I understand that people need to categorize with some names, like \u2018minimal art\u2019 or \u2018fibre art.\u2019 If that makes it easier [\u2018minimalist\u2019] might be the name\u2026 I try not to title each single painting. It\u2019s all untitled, actually.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yamahira tends to undermine the integrity of the stretcher bars as well, leaving, in some cases, entirely deconstructed canvases. An untitled 2018 piece resembles a large skein of pink wool hanging from the wall. The destruction of the canvas is a fundamental necessity in the creation of these paintings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019ve still not completed the possibility of the canvas,\u201d he says, \u201cbut I\u2019m kind of interested in the frames too, the wood frame, which is always at the back of the painting and no one sees that\u2014only the artist, maybe, when they\u2019re stretching canvas.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bringing together the past and present, Yamahira eventually reincorporated his silkscreening techniques into this new style of painting, with the result being that when someone looks into the unwoven threads it\u2019s still possible to see images. Many of his canvases are pre-treated with acrylics, graphite, and silkscreens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s kind of like a starting over or a spiral, so I\u2019m not turning to the zero but I\u2019m kind of going around and getting at the starting point above the beginning,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yamahira spends an enormous amount of time making his art. While he\u2019s working, he listens to the radio and he thinks\u2014a lot. He describes the process of unweaving as being much more than just a part of his life. It\u2019s not a separate activity like eating a meal or practicing meditation; the unweaving is actually his life.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhen you meditate, I think, you\u2019re going to decide when to start meditating, right? You\u2019re going to start sitting or walking around or be relaxed or you\u2019re going to change your clothes, so you have to prepare something, but what I do, painting is closer to my life,\u201d he says. \u201cMy hands are always moving, unweaving canvases, just repeating the same thing over and over and over.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ko Kirk Yamahira
Friday, March 8 to Saturday, April 6
(Opening 7 pm Friday, March 8 with a performance at 8 pm)
Deluge Contemporary Art
deluge.ca<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ko Kirk Yamahira has put a lot of work into his upcoming exhibition of paintings in Victoria. He\u2019s bringing 15 pieces to town, all specifically made for the exhibit. The Seattle-based painter says he\u2019s been spending 10 hours a day at work in his Capitol Hill studio to get ready for the show. \u201cI don\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17370,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17369"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17369\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17391,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17369\/revisions\/17391"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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