MASAKO DANNO & KOOJAH KIM August 26, 2009

Reception on Sunday, September 6, 2009, from 1 to 3 p.m.
Gallery hours: Thursday to Sundays, 12 - 4 pm.

LA Artcore is pleased to present the work of artists, Masako Danno and Koojah Kim, both of whom are concerned with the formal qualities of painting and working from nature.

Masako Danno’s studio is located at the foot of Mt. Fuji, in Japan. In this space, which faces a small river valley, she studies the changes in the wind, air, and light of the four seasons.
As she creates her atmospheric landscapes Danno uses a variety of painting techniques to give the viewer an encompassing sense of place.

Danno finds the following laws of fifth century Chinese painting inspirational and pertinent to the structure of her work: beauty of form, precision of scale, discrimination of yin and yang, refined brushwork, and most especially, a vitality of the imagination, employed so that her work will be understood without the medium of words.

For 15 years Koojah Kim she has devoted herself to working with one subject, that of the sunflower. Her fascination began with a visit to a sunflower farm, where she was awestruck by the field of swaying flowers. Kim claims “to be uninterested in the spiritual part of painting” instead preferring to focus on the formal elements of space, composition, and color when painting, and her emotional response to the subject matter

Kim emphasizes the geometric structure of the sunflower, and the land it grows from, flattening the topography and accentuating pattern and rhythm. Her mixed-media work is done on 12 x 12” canvases, which are grouped together in a grid formation. These arrangements are hierarchical, with surfaces that are heavily weighted by an active visual vocabulary then balanced by more subtle color fields.

Initially drawn to this flower because of its provocative shape, striking color, and orientation to the sun, Kim, is utilizing the energy and focus of this project, to further explore geometrical forms, in her newest series “Encounter”.

Official Website: http://www.laartcore.org