Susumu Kamijo

Venus Over Manhattan is pleased to present The Motherland, an exhibition of new paintings by New-York-based Japanese artist Susumu Kamijo. This exhibition marks Kamijo’s first solo exhibition with the gallery since announcing representation of the artist earlier this year.

Comprising a series of twelve brilliantly hued and deftly balanced paintings, this exhibition continues to expand upon Kamijo’s menagerie of animal figures—canines, birds, a lamb—as vehicles for his penetrating investigation of form, color, pattern, and texture. These highly considered compositions are rendered in oil paint, flashe vinyl paint, and pastel, lending the surfaces nuance and vividness in both finish and color. Kamijo’s exploration of patterning soars in the flora populating these works. The flowers and trees serve as armatures for his mark making, at turns redolent of dahlias, other times using a looser, more gestural hand that evokes languid palm fronds.

All Kamijo’s scenes are set against strips of color indicating a legible horizon, each dotted with a hovering circular sun. Sometimes there is a gentle mountain range, body of water, spate of trees, or swath of land echoing the horizon line. The faces of his canine figures are tight composites of geometric fervor offset by the generous shapes of solid, saturated color that constitute their bodies.

Each canvas decidedly situates its characters in relationship to one another, as well as to the elements of their environments, creating a sense of relationality and harmony throughout the series. The probing and utilization of geometry and proportion, through-lines in Kamijo’s practice, are realized here, brightly, and exuberantly, to the hilt. With these works, Kamijo’s poodle motifs meet environments constructed of similar graphic elements, functioning in concert with one another to conjure a fully realized world.

Susumu Kamijo (b. 1975, Nagano, Japan) He received a BFA from the University of Oregon in 2000, and an MFA from the University of Washington in 2002. Kamijo’s work has been the subject of numerous solo presentations both stateside and abroad, including recent exhibitions at Venus Over Manhattan, New York; Perrotin, Seoul; GNYP Gallery, Berlin; Harper’s, East Hampton; Marvins Gardens, Queens; and Stems Gallery, Brussels. His work frequently features in major group exhibitions, including recent presentations at Carl Kostyal, Stockholm; The Pit, Los Angeles; Alexander Berggruen Gallery, New York; Rod Barton, London; and Harper’s, East Hampton. Kamijo lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.