08.10.2024 Tue
Seki-city
Toko Shinoda

The Shapes of Vermillion

Information

Number of items exhibited
27
Period
Sept 30 (Mon.)–Dec. 18 (Wed.) 2024
Closed
2nd and 4th Saturdays, Sundays, national holidays
Admission
¥500, children through high school age free of charge.
Event
• Concert: Hisaya Sato Violin Recital
Known for the deep passion and emotion of his performances since his debut in Japan at Casals Hall in 2002, Sato is a violinist who has won wide critical acclaim.

Location: Gifu Collection of Modern Arts Daichi Hall
Date: November 16 (Sat.), 2024
Time: 5:00 p.m. (doors open 4:30 p.m.)
Capacity: 100
Fee: ¥1,000 (including entrance to the Toko Gallery)
Deadline for reservations: November 8 (Friday)

• Workshop: Painting Vermillion on a Silver Ground
Shinoda Toko’s works include many with vermillion painted on a silver ground. After close observation of Shinoda’s works in the gallery, participants will try their hand at making their own work on paper with vermillion on a silver ground.

Date: November 30 (Sat.), 2024
Time: 1:30–3:30 p.m.
Location: Gifu Collection of Modern Arts Daichi Hall (observation in the Toko Gallery)
Capacity: 10 persons
Fee: ¥1,000 (including entrance to the Toko Gallery)
Deadline for reservations: November 24 (Sun.)

• Gallery Talks by Museum Curator
Curator in charge will make the rounds of the works on display providing explanations.
Dates: October 5 (Sat.), November 2 (Sat.)
Time: 2:00 p.m. (about 1 hour)
Fee: Free of charge (entrance ticket required)
Reservations: Not necessary. Please gather at the Toko Gallery reception desk.

About the Exhibition

Shinoda Toko’s ink paintings brim with tension and energy, the lines and planes of the ink resonating together and with the empty space. Her abstract expression in sumi is the art she arrived at through a long search for shapes of her very own. The lines and shapes in sumi issuing forth from her ink originated in calligraphy and evolved into painting that attempts to express the invisible shapes of the heart.
Shinoda used to say: “Sumi ink is of a color that is never absolute black, no matter how dark, but includes all colors and allows for the creation of all sorts of colors; it can be transformed into any color.” And in her exploration of expression in sumi, she used only a limited number of colors, including gold, silver, and vermillion. Of those colors, vermillion was for long firmly limited to the seals she used to sign her works. But from around 1970, vermillion appears in her works as if emerging out of her struggles with expression in sumi; in time it came to play an important role in her oeuvre. The presence of vermillion increased from the 1980s onward, and the generous shapes in vermillion that appeared as planes executed with wide brushes, quite in contrast to the somber world of utter blackness, created works filled with boldness and passion.
This exhibition highlights the great variety of Shinoda’s vermillion works, from those in which it maybe only a single streak to others where it appears in bold planes.