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Yuko Murata
Jeffrey Ian Rosen |
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Born in 1973, painter Yuko Murata presently lives and works in Tokyo. Murata consistently depicts either semi-abstract landscapes conspicuously absent of figure, or one or two animals placed within a landscape. The paintings, most recently executed on small wooden panels -- 24 x 33 cm is an oft-employed size -- consist of overlapping yet distinct brushstrokes painted in a now-familiar contemporary palette consisting of muted blacks, blues and browns. In a recent interview, Murata cites the India ink work of Edo period artists Jakuchu Ito, Shohaku Soga and Shukei Sesson as an influence -- though, unlike the aforementioned artists, Murata's visual source material is mediated; rather than paint from direct observation or personal memory, Murata, like many of her contemporaries, utilizes found photographic material as a basis for painting. Culled from illustrated travel books and pamphlets, as well as more encyclopedic material, photographic images of un-peopled coasts, snow-covered forests and rocky mountain passes are filtered through Murata's vision and re-presented in a personalized, simplified form.
Murata's paintings are at once understated and possessing of a strong material presence; though compact, each work is dense with surface visual information. Placed atop casually layered brushstrokes, daubs of paint serve both as simplified visual signifiers -- tiny black globs as bird's eye and beak in "Mountain Pigeon" (2005), raised tan and grey streaks as sand and rock in "Local Coast" (2005) -- as well as self-referential signs of each painting's physical presence. This insistence on physicality, strengthened by Murata's switch from paper to panel as paint carrier, aids in grounding paintings in danger of disappearing in their apparent effortlessness.
Murata's method consists of de- and re-constructing images; content is stripped as images are de-contextualized and reworked in the artist's representation. In a sense, Murata's source material offers a perfect opportunity to re-create from pre-existing imagery. Each source photograph was initially useful for its ability to illustrate and to provide supplementary visual information; by taking the images out of this referential context, Murata strips them of their intended meaning, and is effectively left with a clean slate on which to present an idiosyncratic vision.
It is Murata's stated intention to present paintings that may be perceived as austere. Though this aim is far from novel, Murata is unique in her unexpected choice of source material. One would hardly expect an artist to search for -- and to find -- a quietist vocabulary in the pages of travel brochures and illustrated encyclopedias. Yet this is the material to which the artist is drawn and it is Murata's particular genius to realize that this (as any) material, when viewed from the correct perspective, may serve as an entry point to contemplation. In appropriating and restating the found images in her own spare visual vocabulary, Murata may present the popular-exotic as contemplative. The willingness to engage and represent otherwise marginal material in a highly personal manner situates Murata comfortably within the discourse of contemporary painting and leaves one eager to view the result of further refinement and development in this young painter's promising practice. |
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