HRD FINE ART

Introduction

HRD FINE ART is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of Yokohama-based contemporary artist Ayako Kurihara in October through November this year, which will be her second solo exhibition in Kyoto.

After graduating from the oil painting department of the Aichi Prefectural University of Fine Art and Music, Kurihara has been working with a variety of media including painting, photography, performance, and installation, always staying experimental and keeping herself free from conventions. In recent years Kurihara's artistic activities saw an expansion both geographically and methodologically, as she has participated in a large-scale outdoor exhibitions held in Japan and in Korea.

This upcoming exhibition will showcase her trademark series titled “Mind Games,” which she has been working on for several years. Adopting the rules of a popular but simple board game called “Othello” or "Reversi," she creates paintings by stamping circles of two different colors alternately, eventually filling up the painting surface (canvas, paper, or glass door, etc.). Some times she invites someone else to play the game together to make a work, and other times she plays the game by herself, simulating two players, to complete a painting all alone. What made her come up with the idea of the board game/painting was her doubts about creating paintings, which requires a painter to arbitrarily "finish" somewhere along the way, hence involving a notion of control or self-expression. Painting, however, is made according to some certain rules, inherently and without exception. So Kurihara's "Mind Games" can be seen as an attempt at disclosing those rules in an extreme but humorous manner.

Exhibits will include works resulting from a game played electronically between the artist and her friend through the Internet using social network platforms, as well as those recreated from the outdoor installation work she made in the demilitarized zone in the Korean Peninsula. Through these works, we aim to provide small but interesting clues to the questions often asked, such as "What is painting?" "What is abstract painting?" and "What is it to paint a painting?"