Aki Kuroda, born in Kyoto in 1944, began painting at the age of three. As a child, he was fascinated by the surrealist magazine Minotaure that his father received from Paris. He exhibited for the first time at the age of 10. In his youth, Aki studied art history, travelled, stayed in New York and then in Paris where he settled permanently in 1970. His first solo exhibition took place in 1978 in Germany: Doland Museum in Shanghai, Museums of Modern Art, Tokyo and Osaka, Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris, Museum of Imperial City in Beijing, National Museum in Bratislava, Fondation Maeght, Saint-Paul-de-Vence, Municipal Gallery of Modern Art in Dublin.
Aki Kuroda is intimately linked to the literary world. Marguerite Duras accompanied his first exhibition with an original text. From 1985 to 1994, with Yoyo Maeght and Didier Ottinger - today deputy director of the Centre Pompidou in Paris - they published Noise, In 2017, Éditions Gallimard gave him free rein to illustrate Shakespeare's Hamlet in a book with 50 original drawings.
Aki Kuroda freely develops his artistic research as much in painting, photography, sculpture, architecture, scenography, installation, performance or happening, all these expressions composing the immense Cosmogarden project.
2021 : Louis Gendre Gallery, Chamalières, Clermont Métropole 2020 : Richard Taittinger Gallery, New York, USA 2019 : Chartres Museum of Fine Arts, Chartres 2019 : Musée Lapidaire, Avignon 2019 : Salle des Dominicains, Saint-Émilion 2018 : Aquarium of Paris 2018 : Hangar Art Center, Brussels, Belgium 2017 : Espai K, Sant Feliu de Guíxols, Spain 2016 : Louis Gendre Gallery, Chamalières, Clermont Métropole 2015 : Nikki Diana Marquardt Gallery, Paris 2015 : Mori Yu Gallery, Kyoto, Japan 2015 : Louis Gendre Gallery, Chamalières, Clermont Métropole 2015 : Centre d'Art des Sablons, Neuilly sur Seine 2014 : Alexandre Lazarew Gallery, Paris 2014 : Biwako Biennale, Japan 2013 : KH Gallery, Tokyo, Japan 2011 : Roppongi Hills A/D Gallery, Tokyo, Japan 2011 : Mori Yu Gallery, Tokyo, Japan 2010 : Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris 2010 : Saint-Émilion Art Center 2008 : Doland Museum, Shanghai, China 2007 : TS1 Museum, Beijing, China 2007 : Beijing Imperial Museum, China 2004 : Espace culturel des Arts, Trèbes 2002 : Museum Château de Bellecour, Pithiviers 2001 : National Stage of Orleans 1998 : Ham Gallery, Nagoya, Japan 1998 : Proarta Gallery, Zurich, Switzerland 1997 : Casa França-Brasil, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 1997 : La Manufacture des Œillets, Ivry 1997 : Otemae Art Center, Kobe, Japan 1996 : Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland 1996 : Centre d'art de Chalon-sur-Saône 1996 : Imura Art Gallery, Kyoto, Japan 1995 : Debras Bical Gallery, Brussels, Belgium 1995 : Kaj Forsblom Gallery, Helsinki, Finland 1994 : National Museum of Modern Art, Osaka, Japan 1994 : Mizuma Art Gallery, Tokyo, Japan 1994 : French Institute, Zagreb, Croatia 1994 : Museum of Fine Arts, Clermont-Ferrand 1994 : Biennale of Sao Paulo, Brazil 1994 : Museum Le Parvis, Pau 1994 : Imura Gallery, Kyoto, Japan 1993 : Galleria Ellequadro, Genoa, Italy 1993 : Imura Gallery, Kyoto, Japan 1993 : Richter Gallery, Düsseldorf, Germany 1993 : National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, Japan 1993 : Centre d'Art Ferme du Buisson, Noiseul 1992 : National Gallery Museum, Bratislava, Slovakia 1992 : School of Fine Arts, Bratislava, Slovakia 1992 : Musée-Château du Roi René, Tarascon 1991 : Spark Gallery, Tokyo, Japan 1990 : Mayor Rowan Gallery, London, Great Britain 1990 : Debras-Bical Gallery, Brussels, Belgium 1990 : Egelund Gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark 1990 : Gutsch Gallery, Berlin, Germany 1989 : Centre d'art contemporain, Troyes 1989 : Art Center Sainte Chapelle de l'Hôtel Dieu, Troyes 1989 : Arsenal Art Center, Metz 1988 : Nishimura Gallery, Tokyo, Japan 1988 : Aeblegaarden Gallery, Holte, Denmark 1987 : State Gallery, Saarbrücken, Germany 1987 : La Main Gallery, Brussels, Belgium 1986 : Takagi Gallery, Nagoya, Japan 1986 : Museum of the Castle Fort, Sedan 1984 : Georg Nothelfer Gallery, Berlin, Germany 1983 : Takagi Gallery, Nagoya, Japan 1983 : N1 Studio, Nagoya, Japan 1982 : Cultural Center, Tarbes 1980 : Maeght Gallery, Paris 1979 : Vrije Universiteit, Brussels, Belgium 1978 : Kunsthalle, Bremerhaven, Germany
Aki Kuroda in a few words
In his atelier, in 2019 Aki Kuroda is a Japanese artist who lives and works in Paris. He was born on October 4, 1944 in Kyoto and began painting at the age of three. As a child, he was fascinated by the surrealist magazine Minotaure that his father received from Paris. Raised in a cultural environment, one of his ancestors was the first Japanese to visit Vincent van Gogh in his Parisian studio. Aki Kuroda exhibited for the first time at the age of 10. He likes to say that he has been painting since he could hold a brush.
Aki, 5 years old, Kyoto 1950.In his youth, he met James Lee Byars who pushed him to compose his first performances. Aki studied art history, travelled, stayed in New York and then in Paris where he settled permanently in 1970.
He rarely visited museums, preferring the atmosphere of the city, the cafés, the streets. He stores up images of places that fascinate him, Carnac, the squares of Rome, the palace of the Facteur Cheval, the phantasmagorical garden of Bomarzo, the bullring and the Corridas of Seville... But above all, he likes to analyze the movement of passers-by in Paris.
Kuroda, installation, Nagoya, 1983In the 1970s, in Paris, he created installations with dried beans, pieces of wood and fragments of plaster to which he gave the shape of pebbles that he painted and then scattered in large boxes placed on the ground. Without an audience, he clandestinely realized a nightly performance in the Luxembourg Gardens.
Aki Kuroda's first solo exhibition took place in 1978 in Germany. In 1980, he was selected for the 11th Paris Biennial and in 1994 for the Sao Paulo Biennial.
Kuroda for the European Summit in 1987 His works are regularly the subject of major exhibitions: Doland Museum in Shanghai, Museums of Modern Art in Tokyo and Osaka, Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris, Museum of Imperial City in Beijing, National Museum in Bratislava, Fondation Maeght, Saint-Paul-de-Vence, Municipal Gallery of Modern Art in Dublin, Centre d'Art Bouvet-Ladubay in Saumur, Casa França-Brasil in Rio de Janeiro, as well as various art centers and galleries in Brazil, Ireland, Japan, Germany, Denmark and the United States...
Installation in the Chapel of the Hôtel Dieu in Troyes, 1989 Masterful public and private commissions mark his career. Aki Kuroda has created murals for architects Tadao Ando, Pistre & Valode, Studio Nikken Sekki and Richard Rogers. Works for the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Strasbourg, the National School of Customs in Tourcoing (work listed in the supplementary inventory of historical monuments), the Leonardo da Vinci University Center in La Défense, the House of Culture of Japan in Paris, the Mauboussin building in Tokyo, the Otemae Univerity in Japan, the Tokyo Dome City Hall or in a street in Paris, with a monumental painting in front of the Ministry of Culture.
Kuroda for the Museum of Strasbourg, the restaurant.
Aki Kuroda is intimately linked to the literary world. Marguerite Duras accompanies his first exhibition at the Maeght Gallery with an original text. From 1985 to 1994, with Yoyo Maeght and Didier Ottinger - now deputy director of the Centre Pompidou in Paris - they published Noise, an art magazine proposing a confrontation of original works of contemporary artists made in lithography and unpublished texts of poets, writers and philosophers, review to which participated, among others, Jacques Derrida, Michel Serres, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Anne Tronche, Yves Simon, Michel Foucault, Philippe Sollers, Pascal Quignard, Marcellin Pleynet. In 1992 Noise received the Vasari Prize for the best art journal.
Hamlet illustrated by Aki Kuroda for Gallimard, 2017In 2017, Éditions Gallimard gave him free rein to illustrate Shakespeare's Hamlet in a large volume enhanced by 50 original drawings. Aki Kuroda plays with space-time, the cosmos, the universe or reality. To feed his imagination, he has not hesitated to get closer to great scientists, astrophysicists like Hubert Reeves, and continues his research with the designers of the Ariane rocket.
Aki Kuroda, Show "Passage de l'heure bleue" Centre Pompidou, 1989In parallel to his pictorial work, Aki Kuroda creates performance shows in which he mixes different artistic forms. He designs sets for ballets such as Parade, which was taken over by Angelin Preljocaj for the Paris Opera and the Avignon Festival, or Passage de l'heure bleue for the Georges Pompidou Center in Paris. He says he is a man of passages between cultures, between East and West, between the purified calm of the Zen universe and the swarming of graffiti, between the soul and the body, between archaic myths and the future to be invented. Aki Kuroda develops freely and in all forms his artistic research, as much in painting, photography, sculpture, architecture, scenography, installation, performance or happening.Aki Kuroda, "Parade" for the Opéra Garnier de Paris and the Avignon Festival, 1993
The worlds of Aki Kuroda
Aki Kuroda likes to create worlds where the three axes of life are mixed and intertwined: the past, the present and the future.
Aki Kuroda questions the place of man in the universe. He plays and plays with all dimensions, all distances, patiently exploring the cosmos, time, silence, night. In spaces that overlap and sometimes collide, Alice meets the rabbit, the Minotaur watches, the planets wander, Ariadne's thread guides us through the labyrinth, mysterious animals fly over cities that emerge from the space night and organize themselves so that the human figure finds its place in their meanders.
In Aki Kuroda's work, the themes come and go without any concern for chronology, some are omnipresent and emerge as the creation proceeds. This is why the dates of realization have no importance for Aki Kuroda. In his work, subjects and themes appear, disappear and reappear in the course of time, over the years. What is important to him is to allow the passage between the different expressions of his art, but also between eras, civilizations, materiality and immateriality, between the sidereal void of the Cosmos and our planet.
The human, in Kuroda's painting, seems to take on an almost geometric appearance, the figure has become a symbol.
Weeping through the light, 1991 - 270 x 160 cm Figure Bleue, 2008 - 300 x 200 cm Passage VI, 2005 - 200 x 200 cm
Aki Kuroda seeks to disrupt the balance between figurative and non-figurative. For him, as for many artists such as Miró, Klee, Picabia or Man Ray, but also Rothko or Kelly, an abstract art that would refuse the link to reality cannot exist.
Sans titre rouge, 1989 - 270 x 160 cm
The feminine silhouette that punctuates his work looks like a caryatid. But this figure is not totally human, in a futuristic projection, and perhaps premonitory, the being, rid of its carnal envelope, takes the appearance of a robot, cold and devoid of sensitivity.
Engraved wood, 1994 and engraving, 1990
Sometimes this long form metamorphoses into a narrow opening, an entrance, a breach to another world. It becomes the passage between reality and dream, between the Earth and the Cosmos.
Exhibition "Sidéral Blue" Bouver-Ladubay Art Center, Saumur, 2018
Kuroda 110492, Acrylic on paper, 63 x 90 cm, 1990
