S otheby’s Hong Kong is pleased to present Meguru Yamaguchi: In My Element, showcasing star works from Yamaguchi’s celebrated Möbius, Out of Bounds, Revisualize, and Shadow Piece series, created especially for this show. Encompassing Yamaguchi’s intrinsic style, Meguru Yamaguchi: In My Element draws inspiration from Robert Glasper’s albums In My Element and Black Radio II, melding various jazz styles from hip hop, classic to pop, with street influence, thus paving the way introducing Yamaguchi to a wider audience in Asia.
Taking inspiration from ancient Japanese calligraphy and reinventing traditional abstract expressionism, Meguru adds bold shots of urban culture and hype, playing with the third dimension and creating mesmerizing visual effects through dynamic use of colors and overlapping different materials.
Transcending stereotypes, rules, borders and boundaries, Yamaguchi casts aside canvases that restrain the physical movement of his strokes. Out of Bounds series underlines the artist’s original method for materialising the unrestrained shapes of the brushstrokes, enabling a dynamic and sculptural artistic expression that expands into the later series – Möbius, Shadow Piece, Revisualize, and Untitled series.
“'In My Element' highlights my creative journey that stretches beyond a canvas frame, merging street culture with art. I am thrilled to have this opportunity to curate an exhibition that truly represents myself, with a mélange of all my styles and influences, and share my new works with Sotheby’s and the Hong Kong audience.”
7–19 September 2022
Weekdays | 10:00 AM–6:00 PM (*7 September: 10:00 AM–5:00 PM)
Weekends | 11:00 AM–5:00 PM
Sotheby's Hong Kong Gallery
5/F, One Pacific Place, Admiralty
*Pre-registration is required. Successful registrants will receive an email confirmation, which is required for admission to the exhibition.
Enquiries:
Fusako Oshima | Fusako.Oshima@sothebys.com
Junior Specialist / Cataloguer, Private Sales
I n search of new possibilities of painting, Yamaguchi’s uniquely chaotic, vibrantly intense and visually robust abstraction seeks out an alternate expression to one of the most fundamental elements of painting, the brushstrokes. By probing into brushstrokes and its departure from the surface, similarly to how the Gutai master Kazuo Shiraga, investigated the body and surface by painting with his feet, Yamaguchi explores the liberating potential of painting. Following the iconic brushstroke style in Out of Bounds, Möbius is a larger scale series, with more emphasis on curvaceous brushstrokes that are striking and more powerful.
Shadow Piece series is executed with Yamaguchi’s signature wood cut out technique. Taking inspiration from Japanese calligraphy, the artist layers urban street culture influence while reinventing the traditional abstract expressionism into a three-dimensional collage. In this exhibition, the unprecedented use of colour gradients and rich materiality of the series have never been offered before.
Revisualize is not only an artwork series, but simultaneously a concept of recreating old projects into new. Influenced by the Out of Bounds series, the artist’s Japanese aesthetic sensibilities are melded with the music influence from Hip-Hop’s Remix culture and his intimate studies of modern and contemporary Western masters by the likes of Monet, Gerhard Richter and Cecily Brown. While the artworks from other series have a glossy resin finish, the Revisualize creations are left unpolished which unfolds a variety of textures and embraces a sculptural effect amid his abstract compositions.
In Untitled, Yamaguchi revisits the rectangular format and flat surface. Reflecting his determination to push the different medium of art into a fresh direction, he has rendered detailed shots from the Out of Bounds series and printed them on photograph paper. Yamaguchi paints his signature brushstrokes directly on the photographs, reminiscent of his past works, yet breaking away from the previous series, creating new images with contrasting layers.
Meguru Yamaguchi is a NY-based Japanese artist. Born in 1984 in Shibuya-ku, Tokyo, Yamaguchi moved to New York in 2007 and is currently based in Brooklyn.
Yamaguchi focuses and pursues the endless possibilities of brushstrokes’ expressions, one of the most fundamental elements of painting, which are seen in his signature work series Out of Bounds, with the concept of “transcending stereotypes, rules, borders and boundaries, as well as the expansion of painting.” He stopped using canvases that restrained the physical area, and created an original method for materialising the unrestrained shapes of brushstrokes, enabling a dynamic and sculptural work style.
Yamaguchi experienced the pivotal transition of Tokyo street culture from the 90’s to early 2000’s. He has collaborated with major brands representing American street culture, such as ALIFE, BILLIONAIRE BOYS CLUB, FTC, NIKE. Yamaguchi has also collaborated with other international brands such as ISSEI MIYAKE MEN, LEVI’s, OAKLEY, and UNIQLO.
