Tomoko Kashiki

A portrait that Tomoko Kashiki describes is fragmented at times and placed in the limited space. It traps a person and its exuded presence on the surface of a painting.

Although the flat and smooth texture and flowing lines strike viewers as a Japanese-style painting apparently, all the works are actually described by acrylic. Taking the process of sanding and repainting on a canvas, her artworks show that smooth painting surface and the background of multi-layered colors. Her painting style which reminds of Buddhist paintings in the Heian period and Bijinga, pictures of beautiful women, with pinewood gardens might be derived from Kyoto where she was born and raised.

As the artist states, "The beginning of painting is my image, and the goal is how much I can approach to it", she creates paintings with overlapping layers by weaving accumulated scenes, fermenting them, erasing them to get closer to goals, checking the ongoing canvas and the goals, and moderating motifs and expressions which adjust the impression. The flatly sophisticated canvas is designed intending to delete the time and evidences of hands because it is considered that described things do not originally contain stories but exist in the head, so time does not exist there. An ordinary sight undergoes a change as it moves toward goals, and it becomes a painting that leaves vivid impression like a daydream.

Tomoko Kashiki was born in Kyoto in 1982. She completed M.F.A. and Ph.D. in Painting at Graduate School of Kyoto City University of Arts. In the past, she had a solo exhibition "Aperto 05, KASHIKI Tomoko ~Daydream~" at 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa (Kanazawa, 2015) and participated in "Takahashi Collection: Mirror Neuron" (Tokyo, 2015), "the 7th Asia Pacific Triennale of Contemporary Art" (Brisbane, 2012), "Yokohama Triennale" (Yokohama, 2011), "Bye Bye Kitty!!!" (Japan Society Gallery, New York, 2011) and other group exhibitions all over the world. Her works are also part of public and private collections, including the Museum of Old and New Art (Tasmania, Australia), the Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art (Brisbane, Australia) and the Toyota Art Collection.