木津本麗 Rei Kizumoto

Born in Shiga, 1998. Graduated from the Painting Course, Kyoto City University of the Arts, 2021. Currently enrolled in the Master’s program at Kyoto University of the Arts. I create abstract work using plant shapes and colors.

Plants have had a huge place in my life in various ways since I was a child. Trees and flowers have natural shapes. However, we change the shapes of these plants in various ways in our daily lives.
I make colored planes and shapes of plants with paints, which I then cut or tear, and recreate the canvas thinking of how the colors will compose the space, like a puzzle. To me, painting is to go back and forth between the border of organic plant shapes and inorganic colored planes.

Kizumoto paints like how a pâtissière works. She spreads medium mixed with paints out onto a plane with brushes or tools used for dispensing whipped cream, and once set, she tears them off to paste onto the support. It is interesting how the thick fragments of medium make the support and layers of colour relative, and appear as individual objects. The artist’s interests are in plants and their transformation; her recent works depict silhouettes of plants and the surrounding space. She seems to be able to instinctively understand the resonance of colours, with an outstanding chromatic sensation.

（Kohei Nawa）