photo story
Kosuke Kawahara’s solo show at RAINRAIN represents a multi-faceted approach to materials, exploring what are conventional ways of organizing knowledge? Or, perhaps, how cosmic, biological, and cultural systems intersect? Throughout the paintings, I recognize forms resembling distorted body parts and hinted symbols from astronomy, depicted with oil paint, acrylic, chalk, spray paint, fabric, and wood. When Kawahara’s surfaces manifest their materiality—a patch of exposed woodgrain or a peel of paint revealing found fabric—they suggest the existence of other dimensions and bring me to question the characteristics of processes like reproduction and decay.
Regardless of their scale, Kawahara’s paintings encompass multiple surprising vignettes. The larger scale Forever Waiting delights me with imaginative passages where raw and deliciously tactile scratched wood inhabits the same space as a collaged scrap of paper or fabric depicting a body part and edgy red marks resembling branches of plants or nerves. Marks, material, color, and narrative integrate into an open-ended yet precise pictorial world.
Similarly tactile, the smaller-scale paintings stir an urge to touch, either the peeling surface in They won’t let you exit or the protruded piece of fabric in Do you remember me? Fabric, marks, images, and paint spills coalesce into a new presence. And the miniature pieces, like those in the Dwarfs series, are equally enticing.
Kawahara’s imagery has a disquieting tension between the sense of vastness and enclosure. For instance, the space in the Soundless Chamber Floor seems to flow up and down, expanding and shrinking simultaneously. The graffiti-like marks conjure the streets of New York City, bringing the sense of sound, color, and constant fluidity of a downtown neighborhood into the gallery space. The tangible horizon line, the “floor,” instantly makes this image an interior or a border between land and sky, a reflection in the water, or enigmatic signals from a cosmic sound system of an exotic star.
Kosuke Kawahara, Exotic Star at RAINRAIN, through March 30, 2024