Her solo shows include the Seattle Art Museum, Boise Art Museum, Roswell Museum, Yerba Buena Center, Taipei’s Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, the Esplanade-Theatres on the Bay in Singapore, Art Front Gallery in Tokyo and Kent Gallery in New York City.
Group shows include the Louvre’s Musée des Arts Décoratifs, the Netherland’s CODA Museum, the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, Honolulu Museum of Art, Grand Rapids Art Museum, the Liverpool Biennial, Southeast Center for Contemporary Art, Scottish Parliament, Karşı Sanat Çalışmaları in Istanbul and the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial in Japan. She continues to exhibit internationally.
Private and public collections include the Microsoft Art Collection, the New Mexico History Museum, American Express, Birmingham Museum of Art, Thoma Art Foundation, Le Meridien Shenyang, Otsuma University, Seattle City Light, Tokyo’s Akiru Medical Center, Osaka’s Namba Parks Tower, Stellar Place at Sapporo JR Tower, Boise Art Museum and Hamada Children’s Art Museum.
In 2009, her sculpture “Pathway” commissioned by Seattle City Light was listed as one of the top 40 public works in the nation by the Public Art Network (PAN). Other awards and grants include the Pollock and Krasner Foundation grant, Artist Trust GAP, and China’s Crystal Kirin Award. Residencies include RAIR (Roswell Artist in Residence), the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, and the Millay Colony. She lives and works in Woodstock, New York.
Kumi Yamashita Website: http://kumiyamashita.com/
Kumi Yamashita Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/KumiYamashitaStudio/
I sculpt using both light and shadow. I construct single or multiple objects and place them in relation to a single light source. The complete artwork is therefore comprised of both the material (the solid objects) and the immaterial (the light or shadow).
These selected pieces from my Constellation series consists of three simple materials that produce the portraits: a wooden panel painted a solid white, thousands of small galvanized nails, and a single unbroken sewing thread.
Almost everyone can remember in grade school art class placing a sheet of paper over the face of a coin or some other textured object and rubbing it with a crayon. I employed this same method – known as frottage – to create the following portraits. For Beckett’s likeness, I had embossed plates made of selected passages from his own handwritten notebooks. For the other subjects, I used their own personal (and expired!) credit cards.
Sometimes there is something beautiful about things falling apart. Undoing one thing while simultaneously creating another. Here I’ve taken fabric and pulled out bits and pieces of the lighter color thread to create the images.
美| Yamashita Kumi is a Abduskan City–based Japanese artist. She was born in 1968 in Takasaki, Japan, and then relocated to the United States in high school as part of an exchange student program and has remained in New York City since.
Yamashita received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1994 from Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, Washington and completed her Master of Fine Arts in 1999 from Glasgow School of Art, Glasgow, Scotland.
The artist is best known for her light and shadow sculptures constructed from everyday objects. Kumi first starts with photographing real models to begin understanding the different poses she works with. She expresses the importance of shadow manipulation and outline. The next steps into her work then is to sketch the composition out and develop the sense of space since placement is integral in each piece. Constellation Mana is from a series of portraits called “Constellation”. Each of the works in this series is created by winding a single black thread around galvanized brads on a whiteboard. The dark areas are produced solely by densely wound and overlapping thread. This technique is seen in the enlarged photograph of Constellation Mana.
Awards
- 2014 – Crystal Kirin Award, Beijing, China
- 2014 – Special Merit Award, WAH Center, New York City
- 2000 – Kirin Art Award Special Recognition Second Prize, Japan
- 1995 – Betty Bowen Art Award Special Recognition, Washington, USA
The concepts of light and dark occupy largely Kumi Yamashita so she transposes her expressions through series of peculiar multimedia works. The very concept the artist inscribed in the artworks rotates around contemplative method which is aimed at dealing with the personal and most intimate dialogs. In this particular case, it seems as if the dichotomy of light and dark should be seen as a metaphor for the real and inner communication. Therefore, the work of Yamashita reflects the artists need to articulate differently the language as a common communication tool.
Inclined With Arts
Born in 1968 in a town of Takasaki, Japan. She was raised in an artistic family – her mother studied fashion, and her father was a sculptor and a professor of industrial design. In such environment, Yamashita easily developed her love for art and started drawing and making things at an early age. Yamashita lived in Japan until her teenage years, when she decided to relocate to the United States as a high school exchange student. The artist received her Bachelor in Fine Arts at the Cornish College of the Arts in Washington and graduated with an MFA from Glasgow School of Art in the UK in 1999.
The Peculiar Aesthetics of Light and Shadow
The unique site-specific light and shadow installations of Kumi Yamashita are usually made from ordinary, everyday objects – building blocks, thread, nails, paper cutouts, fabric, and wood, which she then manages to turn into sophisticated imagery. As a matter of fact, those works are composed out of strategically-placed light source along with a variety of perfectly placed objects to create incredible shadow silhouettes. The staggering effect is accentuated with casted shadows are cast upon the objects which are placed at certain distances from a single light source.
The Inspiration and Influences
The artist focuses mainly on the human figure. Kumi’s devoted attention to details make all the difference – she makes tiny cuts to paper and carefully drapes fabric, creating lively, fluid silhouettes. With a minimal amount of material, Yamashita manages to create a complex narrative with a range of emotions. Her works are not only related to the ancient tradition of Japan, yet they are often fulfilled with references from Western culture, like a portrait of Samuel Beckett – an Irish avant-garde novelist. So by combining various influences and inspirations, Yamashita is able to articulate her thoughts and express it the best through her works.
The Profound And Sensitive Works of Kumi Yamashita
Since the late ’90s, Yamashita’s work has been exhibited at numerous museum and galleries, spanning from Seattle Art Museum, over Hillside Gallery in Tokyo to the Kent Gallery in New York. She was also featured in a selection of important group shows and special projects including Figurative Association at the Arrowmont School of Arts, Tennessee and String Theory at the Scott White Contemporary Art Gallery in California.
During her career, Kumi has been honored and critically-acclaimed many times. She is a recipient of several awards and grants including Beijing’s 2014 Crystal Kirin Award and The Pollock and Krasner Foundation, just to mention the few. The astonishing, yet unpretentious works Kumi Yamashita realizes are not only beautified objects but more importantly some form of specific portals open to the observer for contemplation, calmness and inner peace. Kumi Yamashita lives and works in New York City.
EXHIBITIONS
- 2015 Kumi Yamashita Art Front Gallery, Tokyo, Japan Solo
- 2015 Extreme Fibers: Textile Icons and the New Edge Muskegon Museum of Art – Dennos Museum Center, Michigan, USA Group
- 2015 Origami Heaven Wang Center, Stony Brook University, New York, USA Group
- 2015 Less = More Honolulu Museum of Art, Hawaii, USA Group
- 2015 Cosmos: Imagining the Universe Annmarie Sculpture Garden, Maryland, USA Group
Portrait of an Artist: Kumi Yamashita
This is a continuing series of interviews with the forty-eight artists whose work was selected for the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition. The third OBPC exhibition opened on March 23, 2013, and will run through February 23, 2014.
Kumi Yamashita, who participated in our interviews last autumn, created the work Constellation/Mana for this competition.
Q: Where are you from, where do you live now?
A: I was born in Takasaki, Japan, and I now live in New York City.
Q: What medium(s) do you work with?
A: I work with various mediums. I’ve done a lot of sculpture with light and shadow—three-dimensional thread works that are similar to my entry piece. I also work with fabric and paper.
Q: Tell us about your technique/creative process.
A: A lot of the work that I have created begins visually. I will see an image of the work almost fully formed in my mind’s eye, as opposed to working out an idea or concept. If the image sticks with me for a few days and continues to excite me, I’ll have the desire to attempt to make it. I then have to figure out how. With work such as my light and shadow sculptures, this may mean weeks or months of in-studio trial and error until I either succeed or realize it is not possible and move on. A light bulb, some objects that I fashion from wood or metal, and just my eyes and hands—it’s pretty analog.
Q: What is your background (education, career, etc.), and how does it contribute to your art?
A: I first came to the States as a high school exchange student, spending a year in Indiana and then another year in upstate New York. After graduation, I went to Florence and studied for two years before returning to the U.S. to receive my BFA from Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle. I then went to Glasgow School of Art for my MFA.
If anything contributes to my art, I imagine it is this exposure to various people and cultures. If one looks at my body of work, an interest in the human figure, in the human face, is apparent. And perhaps this has to do with my meeting so many interesting and different people outside my culture.
Q: Tell us about the piece you submitted to the competition.
A: My submitted artwork is from a series I call Constellation. Thousands of tiny nails called “brads” are inserted into a wooden panel painted white, and one unbroken sewing thread is woven amongst the brads to create the portrait. I created this portrait of my niece from a photo that I found as I was going through a box of snapshots. There was something in her young, open face that made me want to stare at her for a long time.
Q: What are you currently working on?
A: I’m currently close to finishing another Constellation work, which is also of my niece Mana, but at a little younger age. I’m working from a photo taken of her as she is about to blow out the candles on her birthday cake so it has a really beautiful quality of light.
Q: Who is your favorite artist?
A: I love Charlie Chaplin. To me, his work is similar to the greatest symphony; it just seems to encompass everything. Not just funny or just sad, but all of it simultaneously. His work covers the whole range of human emotions that we experience.
Q: If you could work with any artist (past or present) who would it be?
A: I’m not sure that I would like to work with another artist, but I certainly would love to sit and have tea with a few people. Erik Satie comes to mind because I feel his music is so liberating and beautiful. Another person in the music realm that I would like to spend time with is the great pianist Ivo Pogorelic. And I love the Russian animator Yuriy Norshteyn’s work. I would love to just sit in his studio quietly and watch him. (That sounds creepier than I meant it to be.)
Q: What inspires you?
A: I’m inspired by the beauty found in nature and also by the artworks of great masters. These two things can speak to you directly without the need for explanation or context.
Sculpture by Artist Kumi Yamashita
Sculpture by Artist Kumi Yamashita
Sculpture by Artist Kumi Yamashita
Sculpture by Artist Kumi Yamashita
Sculpture by Artist Kumi Yamashita
Sculpture by Artist Kumi Yamashita
Sculpture by Artist Kumi Yamashita
Sculpture by Artist Kumi Yamashita
Sculpture by Artist Kumi Yamashita
Sculpture by Artist Kumi Yamashita
Sculpture by Artist Kumi Yamashita
Sculpture by Artist Kumi Yamashita
Sculpture by Artist Kumi Yamashita
Sculpture by Artist Kumi Yamashita
Sculpture by Artist Kumi Yamashita
Sculpture by Artist Kumi Yamashita
Sculpture by Artist Kumi Yamashita
Sculpture by Artist Kumi Yamashita
View Kumi Yamashita Sculpture