The exhibition title of our new solo exhibition Formations with abstract works by the artist Hideaki Yamanobe (*1964 in Tokyo, lives and works in Düsseldorf, Cologne and Tokyo) carries both content and formal meaning: a play between organic and constructed forms and colours/tones, the individual paintings can be recombined, changed and expanded among themselves depending on the exhibition situation.

Text on the works of Hideaki Yamanobe
by Matthias Pintscher (composer, conductor & art collector)

"Hideaki Yamanobe's works explore depth. And they do so with great consistency. They create layers and a unique perspective of our own perception. We encounter silence and a very personal depth of expression in these works. They are introspective, as it were, and yet charged. Hideaki's canvases and works on paper "ring". They are full of resonance and quiet spatiality.

I have always been interested in painting, which allows me to "hear" visual content... and on the other hand, I am interested in music, sound that can be seen and grasped.

This is precisely why Hideaki and I are artistically drawn to each other. We pursue the same goals and yet work in a completely different medium. Yet we work on the same "thing" and this is, I repeat myself, spatial depth and perspective in the visual and the sonorous.

Hideaki paints over his canvases. Many times. That's how this depth is created. Perspective. Immediately I think of another great master of overpainting, Mark Rothko. It is often the case that in Rothko's works you can no longer see the many underpainted layers. Sometimes it is even a very distant spectrum of colour that is in the background, often no longer perceptible but perceptible. That is why these works by Rothko and Yamanobe glow. One is aware of the silent, energetic sound in the underground, even without being able to actively see it.

On the other hand, I admire in Hideaki's works the incredible precision of creative thought and masterful execution of an idea. And it is immaterial whether he works on paper or canvas. The formats vary, the intention and aura is identical.

One of his works in my collection is titled "Snow Noise". The sound of the silence of snow. This is where the spirit of these particular works can be found. One of my favourite works is a small ink drawing. Just ink. But with the calculated thinning of the ink, Hideaki achieves an explosion of subtle colours at the edges of the ink... and yet no colours are applied other than those inherent in the black ink. This is the spirit of these wonderful works that tell of the implosion of colour and stillness."

Wafer-thin on hard wood

With "Formations", the Biesenbach Gallery shows new works by the Japanese artist Hideaki Yamanobe

BY HEIDRUN WIRTH

"Formations" is the title of the exhibition in which Hideaki Yamanobe is showing his larger and smaller pictorial worlds at Galerie Biesenbach.

They play with what is visible and with what is perhaps not yet or no longer visible. How else could one see the very delicate clouds of colour applied to an almost equally bright colour ground. Whereby the word colour already denotes a much-too-much, because the finest differences between ivory light and misty grey are rather "achromatic" on a colour scale.

But even there, where the "colour" becomes strong, up to the deepest concealing black of an enormous ink cloud, power and dynamics become all the more perceptible, but colour is also absent here.

It is the basic tensions between brightness and darkness that are expressed in the work of the artist, who was born in Tokyo in 1964, and for which no colour is needed. The tension persists through all shades.

Despite the reduced behaviour (or perhaps because of it), everything seems precious, the wafer-thin collaged silk papers on the wooden support, the sanded edges that produce black lines under the sanding of the many layers, precisely because at some point there was a black in between. But all this still does not remain in the diffuse.

There are the five black lines, drawn as if with a ruler, which clearly, concisely and precisely represent a house, this time on a reddish background. "Square Garden" is the ambiguous title, which in this archaic, completely transparent five-line house form also thematises the garden. The "formations" given in the exhibition title are extremely different picture for picture.

References to nature are everywhere, you just have to take a little time and perhaps think a little the other way round, when in "Snowy Night" a jet-black hill lies on top of the horizon line of a white picture field. The surfaces have it in them to shift like natural events, like fates or like the whims of people. And you can see that the poetry is always free.

The materials are versatile. Acrylic and sand are used, that fine gampi paper in which the leaves of the daphne are processed, Japanese inks and even the sticks of traditional fans, which the artist uses for squeegeeing.

Hideaki studied art in his native city and received a scholarship to study printmaking in Basel. He now lives and works in Cologne, Düsseldorf and Tokyo.

A new feature is the collaboration with composer Matthias Pintscher, who also perceives the paintings acoustically and thinks they can be heard visually: "We encounter silence and a very personal depth of expression."

Until 30 Sept, open Wed to Fri 12-6 p.m., Sat 12-4 p.m., Zeughausstrasse 26. Prices range from 800 to 12 150 euros.