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| Ingalls - Simon Lee & Yui Kugimiya |
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by Onajídé Shabaka - 31 Oct., 2006
Ingalls - Simon Lee & Yui Kugimiya by Onajídé Shabaka Two artists not seen locally artists made their
debut* at Ingalls
& Associates for the month straddling 25 Oct., – 25 Nov.,
2006: Simon Lee with his photographic/ videographic works and
Yui Kugimiya's paintings on canvas. The opening night was scheduled
a week later than the monthly Wynwood gallery night but, there
was a good crowd in spite of that. As more art venues open and
thrive locally, opening on days specially selected will probably
have to be the norm as it is currently a full calendar just getting
through the one evening in the Design District/ Wynwood Gallery
Walks. [*correction: Simon Lee showed his Bus Obscura during Art Basel Miami Beach 2004 therefore, his work at Ingalls was not a debut for him.] Lee's work, including a video, focused on the camera obscura[1] and its projected image in a natural but, unnatural way, upside down. Lee's "Storyboards," comprising of still shots culled from the thousands the bus produces every second and collaged together to create narratives & video of footage taken directly from the "Bus Obscura." "Bus Obscura" was first made for Art Basel Miami Beach 2004 and since has traveled around the U.S. and London, U.K. This work is made by a multiple aperture camera obscura with back-projection screens installed in a bus like the type that transports rental car customers at the airport.
Bus Obscura: Simon Lee Public transportation is totally different in NYC and Miami/ Fort Lauderdale where people that use public transportation in S. Florida are seen as poor and unable to own a vehicle. In New York City, many don't own a vehicle because public transportation is good enough to get a person from A to Z without hassles and the local notion of humiliation, even if slight. So, it seems curious that images of and in public transportation would be shown in Miami. However, amazing moments can happen on buses and, that means Miami. If one is really interested in observing people, public transportation is absolutely the perfect place to do it.
Bus Windows: Simon
Lee
Yui Kugimiya's rough-hewn paintings, created with a palette knife and odd sense of color, are indeed odd when thinking about an artist's formal training and the requirements of theorical foundations. What would motivate an artist to paint in such a method, one so seemingly rough and crude yet, with a gentleness that belies those same ideas. One idea can be found in the text of Lyle Rexer, "How to look at outsider art":
Certainly, Ms. Kugimiya doesn't consider herself an outsider, naive, or visionary artist but, her personal vision, idiosyncratic as it may be, is her guiding force. This is not to say she has diminished her technical facility in the execution of her paintings or appropriated childlike means. There is no question the artist intends to use such means to her end. (Of course, the jpeg images don't do justice to the actual paintings, neither in detailed manner of paint application nor, true color hues and saturation.)
Imaginable Matters: Yui Kugimiya 1). The Camera Obscura (Latin for Dark room) was a dark box or room with a hole in one end. If the hole was small enough, an inverted image would be seen on the opposite wall. Such a principle was known by thinkers as early as Aristotle (c. 300 BC). It is said that Roger Bacon invented the camera obscura just before the year 1300, but this has never been accepted by scholars; more plausible is the claim that he used one to observe solar eclipses. In fact, the Arabian scholar Hassan ibn Hassan (also known as Ibn al Haitam), in the 10th century, described what can be called a camera obscura in his writings; manuscripts of his observations are to be found in the India Office Library in London. 2. "How to look at outsider art", Rexer, Lyle, (New York : H.N. Abrams, 2005. 176 p. : ill. (some col.) p. 155.) Ingalls & Associates
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