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Beverly Hills

Hiroshi Senju

Haruka Naru Aoi Hikari

May 2 – July 19, 2009

Hiroshi Senju
Waterfall 2009 Fluorescent pigment on mulberry paper mounted on board 76.3 x 38.2"
Hiroshi Senju
Hiroshi Senju
Waterfall 2009 Fluorescent pigment on mulberry paper mounted on board 89.5 x 286.74"
Hiroshi Senju
Waterfall 2009 Fluorescent pigment on mulberry paper mounted on board 89.5 x 143.1"
Hiroshi Senju
Hiroshi Senju
Waterfall 2009 Fluorescent pigment on mulberry paper mounted on board 51.3 x 63.8"
Hiroshi Senju
Hiroshi Senju
Waterfall 2009 Fluorescent pigment on mulberry paper mounted on board 76.4 x 38.5"
Hiroshi Senju
Hiroshi Senju
Waterfall 2009 Fluorescent pigment on mulberry paper mounted on board 71.6 x 89.5"
Hiroshi Senju
Waterfall 2009 Fluorescent pigment on mulberry paper mounted on board 89.5 x 143.1"
Hiroshi Senju
Hiroshi Senju
Hiroshi Senju
Hiroshi Senju
Waterfall 2009 Fluorescent pigment on mulberry paper mounted on board 89.5 x 63.8"
Hiroshi Senju
Waterfall 2009 Fluorescent pigment on mulberry paper mounted on board 71.6 x 89.5"
Hiroshi Senju
Hiroshi Senju
Hiroshi Senju
Hiroshi Senju

About This Exhibition

Widely recognized as one of Japan's most celebrated artists, Hiroshi Senju is renowned for his paintings of waterfalls. With incredible delicacy, he applies translucent paint onto paper creating the sensation of unrestrained movement. Senju began exploring the waterfall image almost 20 years ago with monumental black and white paintings. He introduced vivid color in 2003 and in 2007 returned to a restrained black and white palette, but with pigments that fluoresce a sublime electric blue when viewed under ultraviolet light. This newest series, being unveiled in Beverly Hills, is a culmination of all of these artistic explorations. In daylight the paintings are subtly colored yet under ultraviolet light they glow an otherworldly blue.

Hiroshi Senju is one of the few modern masters of the thousand-year-old Nihonga style of painting, which emphasizes traditional Japanese techniques and materials. His method, which originated in the Meiji period, involves creating paints by grinding mineral pigments from stone, shell and coral, using an animal-hide binder, and Japanese mulberry paper mounted on board. The resulting images are firmly rooted in Japanese tradition, yet wholly modern with a clear link to abstract expressionism and action painting.

The new works in this show inspire viewers to abandon the mundane world and enter a metaphysical realm. They evoke a deep sense of calm, conjuring not just the appearance of cascading water, but also its sound, smell and feel. The renowned critic Donald Kuspit says, "Unsupported by heaven or earth, yet a kind of angelic ladder between them, Senju's waterfalls have spiritual presence."

Hiroshi Senju was the first Asian artist to receive an individual award at the Venice Biennale. His work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles (MOCA), California; The Museum of Modern Art, Toyama, Japan; Yamatane Museum of Art, Tokyo, Japan; The Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music; and the Kushiro Art Museum, Hokkaido, Japan. In 2003, he completed 77 murals at the Annex of Daitokuji-Jyukoin, a prominent Zen Buddhist temple in Japan. He also created a mural for the foyer of the Shinto Shrine at the Grand Hyatt Tokyo. The following year, he was named the art director for Terminal 2 of Tokyo International Haneda Airport where he created a ceiling painting, an installation and a mural. In 2006, he designed a series of new fusuma (sliding screens) for Shofuso, the Japanese House and Garden in Philadelphia. Senju divides his time between New York and Japan, where he is the director of the International Research Center for the Arts and Kyoto University.

For more information, please email: press@sundaramtagore.com or call 310-278-4520

Hiroshi Senju
Artist
Hiroshi Senju
Hiroshi Senju
Publication
Hiroshi Senju
City Magazine
Press
City Magazine
Bringing Happiness Home: Hong Kong International Art and Antiques Fair 2009 September 2009

"Aside from exhibiting a wide variety of antiques, the Hong Kong International Art and Antiques fair has also invited contemporary artists to display their latest works. A specially presented work in the fair is Day Falls Night Falls VI by the Japanese artist Hiroshi Senju who was the first Asian artist to receive an individual award in the Venice Biennale. His painting style is a blend of traditional Japanese painting style and contemporary aesthetics."

THE Magazine
Press
THE Magazine
Hiroshi Senju Haruka Naru Aoi Hikari (New Light from Afar) August 2009

"Humans need to commune with the elements of nature and art at its best can provide such an experience of communion. Artists often reflect on nature and transform it into intensely condensed metaphors, poems, and songs.Through his sublime paintings, Japanese artist Hiroshi Senju has contemplated multiple facets of water, especially its fundamental power, for almost twenty years [...]n essence, he transforms solid materials from the earth to create images of elusive aquatic torrents."

Decorati
Press
Decorati
Insider Guide to LA's Contemporary Art Scene July 2009

Sundaram Tagore Gallery showing of Hiroshi Senju's Waterfalls are nature inspired, well crafted paintings that express movement.

Asian Art News
Press
Asian Art News
Universal Waterfalls November 2008

"I started painting by brush," Senju says. "It didn't really work the way I wanted it to, It was more like the Hudson River School or the work of 19th-Century European artists, which was not what I wanted to do. The more I painted the more I felt to the two most important elements on the earth - gravity and water. And I thought: why don't I try to use gravity, to pour down the paint from the top?"

Art in America
Press
Art in America
Hiroshi Senju: Sundaram Tagore Gallery September 2008

"...Senju creates, from the most simple of low-tech means, cinematic spectacles that appear to be in motion. They are startlingly beautiful works - perhaps too beautiful, since we tend to be wary of beauty - and raise the question of optical trickery, although the trickery is completely transparent..."

Own Magazine
Press
Own Magazine
Hiroshi Senju February 2007

"Hiroshi Senju, one of the world's most revered and internationally acclaimed contemporary artists, is a painter with divinity."

KIPPO NEWS
Press
KIPPO NEWS
Kansai in Focus: Japanese-style painter Senju seeking to foster students into worldwide artists December 8, 2004

"Senju says . . . artists can be recognized as worldwide ones only when their works have been publicly recognized as those which have a clear-cut philosophy and vision toward world peace and environmental conservation."

International Research Center for the Arts, Kyoto University of Art and Design
Press
International Research Center for the Arts, Kyoto University of Art and Design
Hiroshi Senju 2005

"Coming to the 21st century, we bade farewell to contemporary art of the 20th century . . . realizing that only art works which are recorded in history can lend us encouragement, vitality and healing."

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