Work, 1990

Basel 2017
Work

Taka Ishii Gallery

Painting
Canvas, mixed media
112.0 x 194.0 (厘米)
44.1 x 76.4 (吋)
Koji Enokura was born in 1942 and died in 1995. He was a painter and installation artist who received high international acclaim for his participation in the Paris Biennale in 1971 and the Venice Biennale in 1978. Enokura’s practice had studied the tension that emerges when the human body confronts natural objects such as soil, stone and wood, and industrial materials of heavy oil and glass within a given space, and further sought to explore the interdependent relationship between space and such elements. Enokura is often recognized as a member of the ‘Mono-ha,’ yet strictly speaking does not belong to this movement. Through engaging in a dialogue with the material, Enokura had attempted to release physical matter into a context of a mutual relationship with mundane space. Amidst the tension that occurs in the distance between the artist and the overall condition of matter conceived through such aforementioned means, Enokura’s theme had been to re-contextualize all material things from their primordial source. Since the late 1980s Enokura has produced two-dimensional works that appropriate canvas and cotton fabric as their support medium, staining them in oil and acrylic. In addition, Enokura has taken documentary photographs of his installations, drawing significant influence from Provoke, a photography collective of the same era. Enokura also achieves to liberate the finder from the intentions of the photographing individual within the medium of photography, consistently maintaining his concept of releasing the shutter amidst a moment of tension between the self and the subject captured through the camera. His works are included in the collections of the Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, Nagoya; the Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art, Kobe; The Japan Foundation, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; The National Museum of Art, Osaka and The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo.