MYSTIC'S RIDDLES

Ai Kijima

Open to the public:

Wednesday, June 7 - Friday, August 4, 2023

Opening reception:

Wednesday, June 7, 6-8 pm

Artist Talk with Lonnie Potter

Wednesday, June 21, 6-8 pm

Project: ARTspace is pleased to present a solo exhibition of works by New York City-based artist Ai Kijima. Kijima creates meticulously quilted works from textiles gathered from her travels and experiences in the world. She was born and raised in Japan, and from an early age was fascinated with textiles. Her immersive works fuse the vocabularies of Kimonos, kasuri and katazome indigo, childrens' illustrated bedding and folkloric and vintage fabrics from Europe, India, Africa and Turkey where she lived for five years. Of the pop-inflected works using textiles marketed to children, Kijima states " I love the bold, eye-popping imagery of the characters, pop icons and patterns. In my mind they hold a special historical importance within our throw-away society. I want to rescue them before they disappear. To me they are cultural artifacts of our time that are worth saving." Mystic's Riddles features some of the largest works Kijima has created in her studio lately, many incorporating octagonal pieces.

A conversation in the gallery between Kijima and artist/writer Lonnie Potter is scheduled for Wednesday, June 21, 6-8pm.

He writes: The works in Ai Kijima’s new show Mystic’s Riddles are best understood as sculpted paintings. In each she stitches together segments from a wide range of source textiles—children’s cartoony bedsheets pulled from Goodwill shelves, Uzbek ikats found in Turkish bazaars, strips of Japanese kimonos or Indian silk sarees—somehow managing to reverently preserve phrases from the stories these fabrics told, while collaging them to tell new stories of her own.

Like any true traveler, Ai Kijima is at home everywhere, but here is what weaves all the different strands of her border-crossing investigations into a single common thread: No matter where she is, no matter what culture she is deep-diving into, Ai Kijima treats each scrap of fabric devoutly, as the elusive wisp of fragile dream-fluff it actually is. She gives every piece, whether beautiful, banal or bizarre, the benevolent kiss of her whole-hearted absolute acceptance, granting each misunderstood fragment the transcendent grace that can only be achieved through profoundly spiritual aesthetic acts of love.

Always lushly and intimately intricate, joyfully exuberant even when subdued, Ai Kijima’s work somehow manages to thread the needle between every category or label: the silly and the sublime, abstraction and representation, East and West, art and craft, painting and sculpture. Like all the best artists she opens up meanings and opportunities where we least expect them, revealing unfathomed dimensions. Here, at long last, is a magic carpet ride through soul-nourishing, gently-tended never-ever-lands—the kinds we always need, but may have only dreamed of once upon a time.

Kijima has exhibited previously at the Arizona State University Art Museum, Galerie Ernst Hilger in Vienna, Micheko Gallerie in Munich, Columns Gallery in Seoul and Franklin Parrasch Gallery in NYC, among other venues. She studied at School of the Art Institute of Chicago and School of Visual Arts in NYC.

A brochure with an essay by Lonnie Potter is available.

High resolution images available upon request.

For Immediate Release

Contact:
Leslie Kerby or Michelle Weinberg, projectartspacenyc@gmail.com

photography: Michael Hnatov