Corey Helford Gallery Presents Kazuki Takamatsu (1/12-2/16)

Kazuki Takamatsu’s The Way to Release from the Restraint

OPENING RECEPTION
January 12, 2019 | 7pm - 11pm

ON VIEW
January 12–February 16, 2019

“Dependance” (mixed media, 13” x 16”)

On Saturday, January 12, downtown Los Angeles’ Corey Helford Gallery will be ringing in the New Year with a stellar line-up for their first show of 2019, featuring one of their most popular artists. Japanese artist Kazuki Takamatsu returns to the gallery for his fourth solo show, entitled The Way to Release from the Restraint, being hosted in the Main Gallery. Other new exhibitions opening January 12 are a solo exhibit by Akika Kurata and a four-artist group show of small solos by Krista Huot, Lauren YS, Tina Yu and Jang Koal.

“Drawing Of We Were Already Exhausted” (mixed media, 76” x 102”)

Regarding his new works, Takamatsu shares: “There are rules and restraints in life. These rules define the group law that we must keep, they describe how various types of people live together.

This group of new paintings is based on my participation in a group, an art organization in Japan, that was created 100 years before me. I joined when I was young and energetic and became the leader of the group. But they expected too much of me and soon I had no time for my work. The question came: do the rules of the organization override the instincts of art? Do I need to sacrifice my dream for them? Most of the leading members of the organization are over 80 years old. They see the importance of rules from a different generational perspective.

I am very close to them, and appreciative of them. But I knew that to do my work, I had to escape them. They are like family and wish the best for me, yet I had to leave the organization to win my life. This story applies to society, company, lovers, friends, family and generation. Most restraint is of goodwill and meant to compose a world in which people live comfortably. Especially in Japan, where people want to live the same as others and it is difficult to live or have an idea different from others. The meaning of this work is ‘Come on! Go for freedom!’ It is the thought in which I created these works, as I experienced the mixed emotions of the need to create and understand the purpose of restraint. I have made no compromise with these works that I am showing at Corey Helford Gallery.”

“One’s Self” (mixed media, 21” x 18”)

The Way to Release from the Restraint opens on Saturday, January 12 from 7pm - 11pm in the Main Gallery. The reception is open to the public and the exhibit will be on view through Saturday, February 16. The space is open Tuesday - Saturday, 12pm - 6pm. Corey Helford Gallery is located at 571 S. Anderson St. Los Angeles, CA 90033.

About Kazuki Takamatsu:
Kazuki Takamatsu was born in 1978 in Sendai, Japan, a country known as much for its picturesque landscapes as for its high rate of suicide, a duality that contributes to the beautiful sadness permeating the artist’s work. He attended the Department of Oil Painting at Tohoku University of Art & Design and graduated in 2001. Takamatsu currently lives and works in Sendai, which was devastated by the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in 2011.

The event can still be felt in Takamatsu’s work, who mixes sorrow with hope in an endless spiral of emotions. Takamatsu’s depth-mapping technique, a style of illustration inspired by Japanese girl’s comics, is as unique as it is painstakingly intricate, fusing classic drawing, airbrush and gouache painting with computer graphics. In this method, the individual pixel becomes a shade of grey which is proportional to the distance from which the viewer sees it. This combination provides the artist with the ability to achieve amazing depth and surrealism in his works. The artist’s black and white Dolls, born in a digital study, gain their shape through the infinite declinations of whites and grays, in order to reemerge from an abyssal X-ray lighted deepness with a “digital makeup” effect. “White and black metaphorically express the ambiguity of positive and negative, good and evil, race and religion,” the artist writes, and continues “by combining modern digital CG materials with analog materials, I am trying to document the emotions that young boys and girls feel towards modern systemized society…and the congruence of humans and digital society.”

Those mover principles express through dark and violent stories of floating melancholic childish figures, who are either in despair either in possession of symbolic elements such as a threatening skull, or lethal killing machines. Little melancholic Lolitas posing with innocence create an atmospheric mystic world where every corner can reveal a glimmer of light, or conceal the deepest darkness.

Takamatsu also explains how his manner of combining digital process with traditional painting (and hundreds of unseen sketches) emphasizes the mentioned juxtaposition between good and evil. This translates the artist’s work as a special symposium of medium and meaning, united through the artist’s notable technique and intricate ideas. From such a technical and well-planned execution, we get a mystifying experience of Takamatsu’s own sensitivity. To him, each layer of his paintings represents “distance where there is no light and shadow” a way to explore dark narratives such as death and the current social conditions.

About Corey Helford Gallery:
Corey Helford Gallery (CHG) was first established in 2006 by Jan Corey Helford and her husband, television producer and creator, Bruce Helford (Anger Management, The Drew Carey Show, George Lopez, The Oblongs) and has since evolved into one of the premier galleries of New Contemporary art. Its goals as an institution are the support and growth of young and emerging, to well-known and internationally established artists, the production and promotion of their artwork, and the general production of their exhibits, events and projects.

CHG represents a diverse collection of international artists, primarily influenced by today’s pop culture and collectively encompassing style genres such as New Figurative Art, Pop Surrealism, Neo Pop, Graffiti and Street Art, and Post-Graffiti.

After nine years in Culver City, CHG relocated in December 2015 to a robust 12,000 square foot building in Downtown Los Angeles, where it continues to host exhibitions within the heart of the city’s art community. The current space boasts three separate galleries, each of which house individual artist and group exhibitions, whereas the main gallery offers 4,500 square feet, providing total immersion for its attendees. New exhibitions are presented approximately every five weeks. For more info and an upcoming exhibition schedule, visit CoreyHelfordGallery.com and connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.

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