Advising and Investing in Transformative Leaders
Advising and Investing in Transformative Leaders
Oil and acrylic on canvas board. 20 x 32 in.
This painting was created by two conjoined canvases, the left canvas being an impastoed gestural abstraction, in the manner of Joan Mitchell or Willem DeKooning, and the right, a high key graphic icon, representing various biomorphic abstractions and the animal world. Kagoshima made the abstract paintings first and after staring at them for long periods of time, he painted the shapes and forms which emerged for him from the abstractions (much like finding animal shapes in clouds). While looking at each painting, it’s impossible not to compare and contrast the two panels like a game of optical cat and mouse.
This work straddles New York Pop, Japanese cartoons and Surrealism. The painting is from the nineties and had been hidden away in the artist’s studio for the past 25 years until recently showing at the Brennan & Griffin Gallery. The show was reviewed in Artforum.
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E'wao Kagoshima (b. 1945, Nigata, Japan):
E'Wao was born during the American occupation of Japan after World War II. This pivotal time when Japanese society was mashed up against Western culture would have a profound influence on his work. In 1976 he moved to New York and immersed himself in the East Village art scene and in 1983 had a solo show at the New Museum.
He’s always been off-radar due to his reclusive and utterly technology-free lifestyle but recently he’s had solo shows at Gregor Staiger in Zurich, Algus Greenspon in New York and The Box in LA and was included in a group show at Simone Subal a couple of months ago. His reclusiveness and technophobic lifestyle can't be overstated; he has never touched a computer or cell phone and only communicates via snail mail and in person, and he does not travel to his shows outside of New York. He rarely accepts studio visits.
The visibility he had in the 80’s - 90’s was due to the fact that he was married to a woman who acted as his conduit to the outside world. When she passed away in the early 2000’s, he fell off the art world radar save for a few European and New York dealers and critics who continued to show his work sporadically. He is now experiencing a resurgence in the art community.