Kaoru Arima at Queer Thoughts

(link)

Drawing was at one time a knowledge. Drawing of fetuses cut from cadavers were cutting edge science. The limits of knowledge were defined by looking at something really hard. When science and tech jettisoned oils and pencils from its repertoire modern artists got mad and crushed representation into something resembling a crumpled Coke can, seeing all sides at once, and this violence was lauded. I find it a bummer how quick artists were to give up looking at their sitters, the ones who did seem to continue looking at their sitters did so in ways subservient to the miracle of technologic reproduction all too Close, and look how that turned out. There's others ways of looking of course and surrealism and non-objective versions oscillated since. But so the PR firmly presents Arima's as looking albeit in the haptic sense, butting them up to the Francis Bacons they lean but don't ultimately fall towards. And though their reproduction isn't necessarily representational it is satisfying that the PR at least affirms their accuracy.

Kaoru Arima at Misako & Rosen

(link)

Brutalization of the human visage an ever occurring painting theme. Since early modernism human features bludgeoned to bloom bruise bouquets, or apply rictus like geometries, portraits of a stroke. On and on painters rushing to do injustice to portraits.  It became a joke so safe it could be featured in children’s movies, and so you've got potatoes exclaiming, “Hey look at me, I’m Picasso." These aren’t Bacon, for whom, as Deleuze saw through so quickly, the face was subregister to the thing-head, the meat slab head. Here, the face is more figurative idea, an outline, a Jawlensky like framework for which to hang wanton libidinal paint.  A Martin Creed portrait mistake that continues long past the child crying for it to stop, I mean he’s already dead. And but so the joke so played out, that today our countenance used as a rack for paint is a small irony. We find its horror almost playful, cute, even interesting, a learned tolerance for pain.

See too : Heather Guertin at Brennan & Griffin , Joanne Greenbaum at Crone , 

Raoul De Keyser at Inverleith House