June 16 – August 16, 2012
Opening Reception: Sat, June 16 from 7:30 – 9 pm
CRS (Center for Remembering & Sharing) presents “Umi no Namida (Tears of the ocean),” an exhibition of recent paintings by Rie Nishimura.
“About 70.8% of the earth surface is covered by the ocean. And how much do you think we’ve been polluting that ocean, and destroying living environment of sea creatures? In this show, I will express the message from the ocean with my paintings. I will pray for the mother ocean to get revitalized again.” — Rie Nishimura
Using a handful of vibrant acrylics in each work, Nishimura heavily layers overlapping circles and strokes reminiscent of Japanese calligraphy to create dense fields of color from which basic abstract patterns can be easily discerned. Ms. Nishimura typically starts and completes each painting in one session, which she likens to a meditative dance, and the dynamism of her lines attest to the physicality of her approach.
At the Opening Reception, Ms. Nishimura and artists Chaz Ganster and Fred Hatt will also share a short live performance combining dance, painting, body painting, light, and sculpture with music by composer Friedrich H. Kern in a gesamtkunstwerk inspired by coral bleaching, jellyfish proliferation, and accumulation of plastic in the ocean. One artist plays a coy jellyfish, representing indifference, and the other artist plays a sick impregnated male seahorse, representing fragile beauty. The performance will take place from approximately 8 – 8:15 pm.
About Rie Nishimura
Rie is a performance artist and painter born in Tokyo, a graduate of Musashino Art University. Her performance combines dancing and painting to capture her feelings in the moment. She creates a unique atmosphere, allowing her to share time, space, and experience with others. For Rie, art-making is an inevitable process to welcome, feel, and express the new flow of emotions.
http://www.rienishimura.com
About Chaz Ganster
Chaz Ganster (CG) is a Japanese-American artist working in Brooklyn with formally-innovative mediums to discuss environmental issues concerning the ocean. He is a graduate of Wesleyan University, and previous set design collaborator for Eiko and Koma. He recently worked on the special effects team for “Beasts of the Southern Wild”, which took Grand Jury Prize at Sundance and Camera d’Or at Cannes.
http://chazgangster.com/
About Fred Hatt
Fred Hatt is a painter, media artist, and writer, videographer/photographer and projectionist. He collaborates frequently with performing artists. For the past three years he has been publishing the influential art blog “Drawing Life” (fredhatt.com/blog). As an artist, Fred Hatt crosses the boundaries between performance and visual arts, between traditional craft and contemporary technologies. Whether making a drawing, a video piece, a photograph or a performance, the focus is on the perception of energy and its expression through light and form, movement and gesture. He has presented drawing and painting as a form of dance or performance art, and has created projection and special lighting effects for dancers and performers at venues including PS 122, LaMaMa ETC, Dixon Place, and Chashama. Fred’s art has been seen in galleries, theaters, nightclubs, gardens, rooftops, dance studios, on the internet, at festivals, on television, and on the internet. He has had seven solo gallery exhibitions in New York since 1998 and has been in more than thirty group shows in that time.
Umi no Namida (Tears of the ocean) – Paintings by Rie Nishimura
