Evelyn Taocheng Wang at KAYOKOYUKI

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"fragile candy, soft and hard shell, capturing its affect in an art lozenge. Swallowable. .... affect is captured, the feeling, packaged."

It's a personal bias - associating sumi with chintzy prettiness, a touristic souvenir art. "takeaway objects of little import but hold significance. ...tchotchkes are transactional objects made for the transference of the buyer's desire. The souvenir acts as a placeholder for tourist's urge.. likely some vestigial expression of our sexual selection's wiring, which is why so many of them are cute. "

Yu Nishimura at Crèvecoeur and KAYOKOYUKI and Komagome SOKO

(Crèvecoeur, KAYOKOYUKI and Komagome SOKO)

either avoiding or lack a language for the most obvious elements of painting. Or pretend the obvious isn't. Speak to some ulterior, interior, some grand "meaning" just out of sight. Matisse painted incredibly stupid paintings of goldfish, even more of women, but we don't say that; we say, "Goldfish were introduced to Europe from East Asia in the 17th century." A complete non sequitur to painting. We pretend painting is too serious, handled with care. But it is the childlike wonky that is their enjoyment, the complete derangement of "cat" that may be their only fun. Look how poorly I can paint it and still might make you feel it.  But, "poor" is a subjective term masquerading as an objective one, an assessment tool of some biased hoodwink. We don't say that anymore. Which is why this cat looks like a pickle.

See too: Trevor Shimizu

Nobuya Hitsuda at KAYOKOYUKI

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These paintings are fine. Will we ever see more of them?