Featured Artists: Tai Nakatani, Chi Yan Ho, Kenkichi Usami

Opening Hours: 14th – 21st March 2018 , 11:00am – 7:00pm (Sunday by appointment only)

G/F, 5A Ko Shing Street, Sheung Wan, Hong Kong

 

 

Ko Shing Gallery is pleased to announce the artist Tai Nakatani in conversation with Chi Yan Ho is back for exhibition. The works are carefully selected again from our permanent collection and are partly presented in frames that are handmade by Kenkichi Usami. 

 

Tai Nakatani (1909 – 1993), a renowned post-war artist, build up his reputation through his unique sense of style and the techniques he used. His works have been collected in various museums, for example, the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura & Hayama, Nagoya City Art Museum and The Museum of Art Fukishima Prefecture. Nakatani’s works depict a familiar theme, using a calm colour tone, filled with a refined and delicate taste. His artwork captures certain real life scenarios through paintings of coal, clay and labourers. Nakatani’s portrayals of the labourers are painted with great sympathy and appreciation.

 

Nakatani met his fellow Chinese student, Chi Yan Ho at the Tokyo University of the Arts in 1974. Ever since they met, they continue to influence each other’s creativity. 

 

Chi Yan Ho (1948 – ) went to Japan when he was 22 to pursue a deeper understanding in arts. Being passionate in learning from the Old Masters, he later becomes a prominent Art Conservator in Japan. He restored national treasures and paintings from artists such as Cezanne, Picasso, Renoir, Matisse, Millet, Rouault, Ryuzaburo Umehara, Taikan Yokoyama, Hakuin and Gyoshu Hayami. Ho’s delicate painting technique has profoundly been influenced by restoring the Old Masters’ paintings.

 

Kenkichi Usami (1916 – 1999) met Chi-Yan Ho through Tai Nakatani’s Studio at Tokyo University of the Arts and have remained close friends with Nakatani and Ho.

Usami stated:

 

"The frame is ruined if it stands out more than the painting itself. The frame acts as a medium through which the soul of a painting is represented"

 

Usami initiates the framing process by communicating with the artist and forming a bond with the painting in order to create a truly unique frame.