Comprehensive survey of early Japanese abstract painting (and photography). Including Koshiro Onchi, Iwata Nakayama, Saburo Hasegawa, Kiyoshi Koishi, Ryuichi Amano, Ei-Q and many more.

Yutaka Matsuzawa (1922–2006) was considered the father of Japanese conceptual art. In his pursuit of ways to express the invisible invisibly, Matsuzawa developed a unique understanding of conceptual art that both elevated and transcended the typical notions of conceptual art in the western, euro-centric art worlds.

A new edition of Yutaka Matsuzawa’s groundbreaking book, Quantum Art Manifesto was published on the occasion of the exhibition Yutaka Matsuzawa at Yale Union, curated by Alan Longino and Reiko Tomii. Including the original Japanese text, the original English translation (with minor edits), a foreword by Haruo Matsuzawa, and an essay by Reiko Tomii.

Offset printed by Gary Robbins at Container Corps with tipped-in color fields and Matsuzawa’s Psi stamp. Exposed spine Smyth-sewn binding. Dust jacket letterpressed by Aaron Flint Jamison. This new edition of the publication is now also out of print. Images of the exhibition can be seen here. And a text by Alan Longino on Yutaka Matsuzawa can be found here.

Ei-Q (28 April, 1911–10 March, 1960) was a Japanese artist who worked in a variety of media, including photography and engraving.

He was influenced by the Surrealist aesthetic and also published essays promoting photography as an art form independent of painting. This did not imply a rejection of painting, and he worked toward what in 1935 he termed photo-dessins, a fusion of photograms and paintings.

Various artistic trends originating in Europe after World War 1, such as Russian Constructivism, the Bauhaus in Germany and Surrealism in France, left a strong impression on Japanese art and photography in the Taisho and the early Showa periods. In photography in particular, the Western influence brought a new movement called Shinko Shashin (New Photography) in the early Showa period. This exhibition was an attempt at reexamining the visual expression in the period from the perspective of the photographic work of artists from fields other than photography, focusing on the work of Koshiro Onchi, Osamu Shiihara and Ei-Q.

Publication produced for Atsuko Tanaka’s exhibition Peintures at Galerie Stadler, Paris, 30 January– 7 March, 1987.

Atsuko Tanaka was a Japanese avant-garde artist best known for her Neo-Dada Electric Dress (1956), a garment made from hundreds of lightbulbs painted in primary colors. This iconic work, which she wore to exhibitions, functions as a conflation of Japanese traditional clothing with modern urbanization, bringing an unexpected and challenging interpretation to both. “I wanted to shatter stable beauty with my work,” Tanaka once said. A member of the Gutai movement, much of her work used domestic objects like lightbulbs, textiles, doorknobs, and doorbells. With these objects, the artist was able to create work about the body without a body present. She maintained a broad practice that included performance “happenings,” sculpture, and installation, while her later work focusing on two-dimensional painting, with colorful organic abstract shapes connecting circles and lines.

Produced on the occasion of Kansuke Yamamoto: Conveyor of the Impossible, 22 August–24 September, 2001.

Kansuke Yamamoto was a photographer and poet. He was a prominent Japanese surrealist born in Nagoya, Japan.

Yamamoto’s early experiments in collage and photomontage utilized the techniques of the Surrealists in tandem with his own artistic philosophies, beginning a lifelong dialogue in internalizing an internationally inherited art form into his own. While it is known that artists such as Man Ray, László Moholy-Nagy, Yves Tanguy and René Magritte were inspirational to Yamamoto during his artistic development, his photographic works and skills from the outset were strongly innovative and equally comparable to the European artists who he studied

This highly original work represents the socio political situation of the 1930s through a veil of whimsy, sexuality and lampoonery, signature themes in Yamamoto’s practice. By the end of the 1930s, he was leading the Nagoya avant-garde scene as an influential center in Japan. During the Pacific War and until the end of World War II artistic activities were forbidden, and it was after the war’s end that Yamamoto continued to create singular works; working in different mediums including photography, drawing, painting and poetry.—Taka Ishii Gallery