Shinpei Kusanagi: Towing Voyage

Altman Siegel is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Japanese painter Shinpei Kusanagi. Kusanagi will introduce new work in his debut exhibition Towing Voyage, which will be the artist’s first solo show in the United States.

Shinpei Kusanagi’s skillful and intuitive combination of techniques and influences make his paintings singularly unique.  Kusanagi’s canvases recall European landscape paintings characterized by a chromatic palette and broadly applied atmospheric washes of paint.  At the same time, his quickly executed brushstrokes and minimal detail evoke Japanese calligraphy.  His landscapes are both dynamic and understated.  Kusanagi leaves much of the canvas raw, and lets simple strokes of pencil line and acrylic create figures, space and movement.  Gestural white lines create fleeting reflections in glass or falling snow as if the viewer is seeing a landscape moving rapidly by from a car window.  Efficient marks imply mountains, clouds, sidewalks and telephone lines, and yet the overall compositions remain spare and abstract.