Natsuko Kiura
VISTAS
September 12, 2024–November 2, 2024The Breeder Feeder, Athens
The Breeder is pleased to present ‘VISTAS’ by Japanese artist Natsuko Kiura, her first solo exhibition at the gallery.
Kiura attempts to recreate the initial emotions evoked by a fleeting landscape. She depicts the recollection of a memory, as her process starts by working from an initial photograph she captures herself. These scenes are imbued with strong emotional connotations, as they are taken in intimate moments as when spending time with her children. The goal of these preparatory snapshots is the chronicle everyday scenes, a day at the beach or the rolling hills next to a road. Once this is established, she removes any secondary and superfluous detail from this composition in a move that distils the feelings associated with that first impression.
The universality of the artists’ work begins at her titles. Single words reflect the deceptive simplicity of the compositions. The complexity arises in the relationship between the personal moment that Kiura chooses to share with the audience and the apparent neutrality and detachment of the nature in the scenes depicted. Rolling hills, the seemingly infinite sea which merges into the sky and trees that tower over the small shadowy figures. There is a sense of intimacy which is at odds with the scope of the scenes portrayed that elevates these landscapes beyond a mere pictorial representation.
The artist produces her works from a position of transformation and transfiguration, as she investigates the relationship between past and present. There is a softness in the style and colour palette she employs. The blurriness of the landscapes reflects the distance between the audience and the memory that is being presented. The soft palette alongside the delicate brush strokes evoke an ethereal and almost illusionary landscape. Her work is reminiscent of the Japanese Yōga art movement, which itself is another nod to an oeuvre that rests at a transitionary boundary between two cultures and most importantly between past and present.
In all of her work, Kiura remains faithful to this impulse towards universality. Human figures are either non-existent or blend into their environment, as the artist renders nature with precise yet restrained brushstrokes. Her paintings evoke a sense of past nostalgia as each viewer paradoxically relates to an individual memory, which does not belong to them, because of the paintings’ seemingly anonymous nature. The loneliness and remoteness of the vast landscapes become a comforting scene as the viewer imbues it with their own feelings and memories. Kiura’s oeuvre forces the audience to ask themselves: is it precisely in the universality of separation that we can find community?
Natsuko Kiura (b. 1985) lives and works in Kagoshima, Japan, having received her MFA from Onomichi City University in Art & Design. Her medium of choice is primarily oil paintings, as she explores the relationship an audience can have with a memory that is not theirs, yet one that remains eerily familiar. Kiura’s work has been widely exhibited in Japan, most notably in group shows at the National Art Centre in Tokyo (2023), The Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art (2023) and the Ueno Royal Museum (2022). She has also had several solo shows, including at the Takashi Someiya Gallery (2022) and at the Kagoshima City Museum of Art (2021).
