KUMUKUMU is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Bradley Wester for the holiday season. Using Styrofoam, fluorescent bursts, plastic shopping bags and other commercial ephemera, Wester creates bright, sprawling installations that traverse the traditional bounds of authorship, place and cultur... Read more
KUMUKUMU is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Bradley Wester for the holiday season. Using Styrofoam, fluorescent bursts, plastic shopping bags and other commercial ephemera, Wester creates bright, sprawling installations that traverse the traditional bounds of authorship, place and culture. In the second gallery is Fukubukuro, a traditional Japanese holiday gift bag, and Kaoru Hirano’s meticulously deconstructed items of women’s clothing are exhibited in the third gallery.
A traveler by nature, Wester’s aesthetic draws on his experiences in Rome, New York and, most recently, his Fulbright Fellowship at Kyoto University of Art in Japan. Wester integrates and re-contextualizes older work within new compositions, thereby dissolving the concept of the discreet art object and blurring the line between past and present. The work is in constant flux—bursting, airy, subtle, and compositionally rigorous.
Fukubukuro is a unique portfolio specially curated for the holiday season. In Japan, the gift bags are an object of consumer relish, often drawing frenzied lines outside department stores before they are released. Here, KUMUKUMU lightly pokes at the commercialization of the American Christmas gift exchange. The portfolios include four prints and drawings by noted Japanese artists Shigeharu Tochio, Hisashi Tenmyouya, Tomoo Gokita, and Tsuguharu Fujita.
In the third gallery, Kaoru Hirano delicately unweaves clothes of personal significance for her. The separated strands flow like a waterfall or are lifted and strung like a web, both expanding and deconstructing the implied female form.
KUMUKUMU is a new contemporary art gallery in the burgeoning art locus of the Lower East Side, two blocks from the New Museum. The gallery represents emerging and internationally-recognized artists of all media, with a program focused on gender, social, historical and environmental issues. Gallery hours are Wednesday through Sunday, 10AM-6PM. For further information, please contact Atsumi Fujita at atsumi@kumukumugallery.com.
