In Conversation
Setsuko and Y.Z. Kami
The artists address their shared ardor for poetry, the surfaces of painting, and nature.
Abstraction has always been a part of my work.
—Y.Z. Kami
Gagosian is pleased to present Night Paintings, an exhibition of new works by Y.Z. Kami. This is his first solo exhibition in Italy, following his participation in The Spark Is You, a group exhibition organized by the Parasol unit foundation for contemporary art, London, in conjunction with the 58th Biennale di Venezia this year.
Kami’s tenebrous Night Paintings (2017–) are composed largely from a single shade of indigo—said to be the color of the night—mixed with various gradations of white. Each canvas in this new series is filled with blue-whitish apparitions that float just past the limits of materiality and concrete representation. These outlines shift between seemingly solid, liquid, and gaseous states—an osseous structure melts into a milky swirl, which in turn evaporates into a coil of smoke—yet their true forms and references ultimately remain veiled beneath hazy brushwork.
With their soft edges and shimmering biomorphic patterns, Kami’s paintings limn the boundaries between the earthly and the sublime. Subtly informed by his cultural heritage yet resolutely cosmopolitan and secular, Kami’s oeuvre communicates a philosophical and spiritual reflectiveness; at the same time, he visually obscures and anonymizes his subjects, preferring to approach broader questions of the infinite and the ineffable rather than delving into the specifics of a religious existence.
The artists address their shared ardor for poetry, the surfaces of painting, and nature.
Y.Z. Kami and curator Steven Henry Madoff sit down in Kami’s studio to discuss the artist’s exhibition at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, Spain. Entitled Y.Z. Kami: De forma silenciosa/In a Silent Way, the survey features portraits; images of buildings, both sacred and ordinary; a sculptural installation of loose bricks inscribed with texts; and recent dreamlike abstractions.
In celebration of the release of the monograph Y.Z. Kami: Works 1985–2018, and in advance of an exhibition of new works by the artist at Gagosian, Rome, Ziba Ardalan and Elena Geuna sat down to discuss Y.Z. Kami’s work. The conversation was moderated by Gagosian’s Kay Pallister.
An exhibition at Gagosian, Paris, is raising funds to aid in the reconstruction of the Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris following the devastating fire of April 2019. Gagosian directors Serena Cattaneo Adorno and Jean-Olivier Després spoke to Jennifer Knox White about the generous response of artists and others, and what the restoration of this iconic structure means across the world.
Elena Geuna interviews the artist on the subjects of his childhood, his approach to portraiture, and the centrality of light in his practice.
The Summer 2019 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring a detail from Afrylic by Ellen Gallagher on its cover.
Blaise Pascal, the seventeenth-century mathematician and philosopher, served as a crucial inspiration for Y.Z. Kami’s newest body of work. Angela Brown examines Pascal’s ideas and their relevance to these portraits and Dome paintings.
Y.Z. Kami and Peter Marino discuss the power of bronze, the current state of architecture, and the infinite.
During preparations for an exhibition in London, Y.Z. Kami met with Gagosian’s Alison McDonald to discuss the evolution of his work, technique, and his combination of influences.