MEGURU YAMAGUCHI
Yamaguchi was born in Shibuya, Tokyo in 1984 and is currently based in Brooklyn, New York. Growing up under the influence of his fashion designer parents and surrounded by a creative environment and street culture, Yamaguchi’s passion for art is inevitable. At the age of 23, he moved to New York and started his career as a studio assistant for Tomokazu Matsuyama’s studio. Since then, he developed his original concepts to his works such as sampling and cut-up which were previously unfamiliar to painting and continues to unveil them domestically and internationally. In the “OUT OF BOUNDS” series, Yamaguchi enables expressive brushstrokes as if time has stopped at that particular moment. He has gained more recognition and the name Meguru Yamaguchi immediately comes to mind for many of his works. The artist demonstrates to the world with striking, dynamic, and powerful brushstrokes, and his works go beyond boundaries, casting aside the restraints of rectangular-shaped canvas, transcending borders, languages and set of rules. Yamaguchi has also collaborated with brands from various industries, including NIKE, UNIQLO, and ISSEI MIYAKE.
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Title: SPLITTING HORIZON NO. 23
Year: 2022
Medium: acrylic and UV printing on canvas
Dimensions: 292.1 x 227.6 cm (115 x 89 5/8 in.) -
Title: SHADEZ OF BLUE NO.1
Year: 2022
Medium: acrylic, spray paint on UV printed and burnt aluminum panel
Dimensions: 244 x 122 cm (96 x 48 in.)
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SPLITTING HORIZON NO. 23
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Year: 2022This work is a commissioned work by Yamaguchi, one of the artists who inspired this collection, on the establishment of the UESHIMA MUSEUM. It is a 3m length large-scale work. Yamaguchi, who temporarily returned to Japan from New York, experimented with a 3-day trial run in the museum space before completing the piece in his New York studio. This work was made at a major turning point for Yamaguchi, whose previous series such as “Out of Bounds”, featured vigorous strokes and shaped canvases that did not require a support structure. Here, he reevaluates the existence of a rectangular canvas as a support structure. Yamaguchi’s signature color is a special blue that was developed by himself and is used prominently in this work. Despite the coolness of colors, it is bursting with terrifying heat energy. The straight, unwavering strokes, seemingly completely beyond containment within the frame of the canvas, create a blistering sense of movement, drawing the viewers into an illusion that even the space around it is being violently shaken. These strokes suddenly drop from top speed to zero due to ruptures of bright color planes, like sharp fragments of broken glass. The textured print substrate and multiple layers of paint give rise to the work’s complex spatial depth. Sculptural, organically undulating lines leave from the depths to the foreground with the irregularity of splashing water, as if they weave through the spaces left by the straight strokes that dominate the screen. Yamaguchi’s strokes, having obtained the new horizon in the form of the canvas, have managed to demonstrate almost maximal kinetic force in pictorial form.
Medium: acrylic and UV printing on canvas
Dimensions: 292.1 x 227.6 cm (115 x 89 5/8 in.)
Acquired from GOLD WOOD ART WORKS, 2022
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SHADEZ OF BLUE NO.1
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Year: 2022This work features a new form of artistic expression by deviating from Yamaguchi’s vibrantly intense brushstrokes presented in his previous works. This work continued a path of liberation from the constraints of square-shaped canvas and vertical paintings, reminiscing Frank Stella’s “shaped canvas” or perhaps “flatbed” as described by Robert Rauschenberg. However, in this work, Yamaguchi obviously revisits the rectangular format with the use of an aluminum panel, so to speak, returning to “the frame”. If “Out of Bounds” series are paintings devoid of support (strictly speaking support still exists), the “SHADEZ OF BLUE” series breaks away from the concept of support and frame and attempts to challenge in an exact opposite direction where support or frame is mandatory and expressed by “all over” composition. Each area of the composition is given equal significance. With its UV print as the base, it is fixed onto the hard surface of aluminum and is ferociously superimposed with three dimensional pigments. Moreover, perhaps due to the heat of the burner, the aluminum frame which serves as the support is extremely deformed and warped. Pigments with metallic luster such as silver on the key parts enhances the fluctuation and has developed a sense of wobbling unsteadiness to a greater extent towards the distorted painting.
Medium: acrylic, spray paint on UV printed and burnt aluminum panel
Dimensions: 244 x 122 cm (96 x 48 in.)
Acquired from +81 Gallery, 2022