Gyoko Yoshida Seeing in the night _ The Dawn of Meaning

Tokyo Gallery + BTAP, with Yoshida Gyoko, presents her solo exhibition Seeing in the Night: the Dawn of Meaning, from Wednesday 25 March to Saturday 18 April, 2009.

Yoshida Gyoko has consistently produced work which pursues the theme of 'Japanese painting'. For over a decade she has dealt with her work using a method of composition "lacking a central point; portraying a integral space, in which the various parts remain independent," recognizable in the finer examples of Rimpa and Kano school painting; and which is an ancient Japanese method of composition the artist has independently come to pursue and focus on. Yoshida's works question and redress Japanese contemporary art's development under heavy Western influence, seeking the potential of original production.

Yoshida takes a sense of visual illusion mixed from past and present Japanese art, then using various mediums, including performance and installation, makes this into 'paintings'. By not only employing traditional materials such as lacquer, silk gauze, Japanese handmade paper and pigment, but also mirrors and PVC elements, for example, this work manifests a fundamental joy for the very acts of looking, feeling and thinking.

This exhibition presents works Yoshida has executed on folding screens that were originally created by anonymous artisans of the Meiji period; in addition to her series of works on silk gauze, completed over the last fifteen years. These will be installed alongside furniture that Yoshida has created in collaboration with carpenters from the Hida region of Japan, making the exhibition space into a "room".

Tokyo Gallery + BTAP has had a keen eye on the contemporary art of East Asia from its very beginnings. Yoshida Gyoko's individuality is in the way she taps into hidden "channels" in the flow of Japanese tradition, bringing a fresh "stream" into the current of Japanese art today - a historically remarkable feat. We welcome you to this exhibition, which lucidly presents the cutting edge of this artist's thought and creation, as a tangible space.