Keiji Shinohara: Color Harmony

Thursday September 6, 2007 - Sunday December 9, 2007
Keiji Shinohara: Color Harmony

Keiji Shinohara (Japanese, born 1955),Accelerando,2005, color woodcut. Collection of the Artist. © Keiji Shinohara (photo: D. Dudek).

Artist and master woodblock printer Keiji Shinohara combines traditional Japanese woodcut techniques with new materials. This exhibition explored the works Shinohara has created during the twelve years he has taught at Wesleyan University, from 1995 to 2007. Over the last decade Shinohara has gradually returned to his Japanese roots; yet he remains very much a man of his own time and place, an immigrant in a land of immigrants, a Japanese artist in the United States, an innovator within a great tradition.

Shinohara spent ten years learning hangaor traditional Japanese woodcut techniques at the Uesugi Studio in Kyoto, Japan. In 1981 he was certified as a master printer, and in 1985 he came to the United States, where he has lived and worked ever since.

 Shinohara Silent

Keiji Shinohara, Silent, 1997, color woodcut. Collection of the Artist. © Keiji Shinohara (photo: D. Dudek).
Shinohara River

With more than 50 works, the show explored Shinohara's intricate process, from initial preparatory drawings to proof states and finished prints.

Keiji Shinohara, Silver River, 1998, color woodcut. Collection of the Artist. © Keiji Shinohara (photo: D. Dudek).

In conjunction with this exhibition, the Davison Art Center has published a 48-page, full-color catalog, Keiji Shinohara: Color Harmony. Supported in part by the Middletown Commission on the Arts, the catalog features an essay by curator Clare I. Rogan and a complete list of the artist's original woodcuts, monotypes, and monoprints from 1995 to July 2007.

Shinohara Penland

Keiji Shinohara, Penland, 1997, color woodcut. Collection of the Artist. © Keiji Shinohara (photo: D. Dudek).

Related Events:

Thursday 6 September, 5:00-7:00 p.m.
Opening reception with a gallery talk at 5:30 p.m. by Keiji Shinohara, Visiting Artist in Art and East Asian Studies, and Phillip Wagoner, Professor of Art History and Archaeology.

Thursday 27 September, 4:30-6:00 p.m.
A Printer's Error Is an Artist's Heaven: Woodcuts by Keiji Shinohara.This lecture by Keiji Shinohara focused on changes in Japanese woodblock printing technique from the 19th century to the present, using various artists' works as examples. Refreshments followed. (Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies).

Saturday 29 September, 2:00-3:00 p.m.
Demonstration of traditional and contemporary hanga (Japanese woodblock printing) by Keiji Shinohara at the Drawing Studio, Center for the Arts (Art Workshops room 105).

Wednesday 7 November, 5:00 p.m.
Guest Lecture on "Japanese Woodcuts: Tradition of Transformation" by Andrew Stevens, Curator of Prints, Drawings and Photographs, Chazen Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Lecture at the Center for the Arts Cinema; reception and special viewing of the exhibition followed at the Davison Art Center.