Jiro Takamatsu & Dashiell Manley at The ADAA Art Show

Jiro Takamatsu, Cube No. 267, 1969

ADAA The Art Show, Booth D12
February 27–March 1, 2020
Park Avenue Armory at 67th Street, New York

Jessica Silverman Gallery presents “Grids and Shadows,” a two-person show featuring significant historical works made by Jiro Takamatsu between 1968 and 1971 from the collection of Gilbert & Lila Silverman and recent paintings by LA-based half-Japanese artist, Dashiell Manley. Both artists have backgrounds in Buddhist philosophy, which flavor their relationship to absence and presence. As Manleys says of the late Takamatsu: “I feel at home in his space. The works have propositions that are far bigger than the materials that hold them. They transcend their own materiality and enter into the poetic space of memory.”

One of Japan’s most influential artists, Jiro Takamatsu was a central figure in the Mono-Ha movement. Combining a Dadaist sense of humor with Minimalist materialism, Takamatsu brought metaphysical wit to his practice, which will be represented in the booth by classic examples of his iconic series. 

Takamatsu started making his Shadow paintings in 1964, inspired by Pliny’s story of the origin of painting. Shadow of a Brush (1970) is a visual puzzle with a single cast shadow created in gray oils on white painted wood panel. The object casting the shadow is missing, but the hook upon which the brush would have hung is there in three dimensions, creating a witty blend of illusion and “truth to materials.”

Shadows are a significant part of the artist’s Loose of Net sculptures, which investigate the behavior of materials left to their own devices. These rare bas-reliefs are made of white cotton or black nylon string, knotted into a grid. Counter to the hard edges of American minimalist abstraction, Takamatsu’s nets acknowledge nature by yielding to gravity and wink at the viewer by offering “excess” material, which droops and casts elaborate shadows.

Takamatsu’s Oneness of Glass (1971) explores one material, glass, demonstrating its intrinsic properties and transformative potential. For Takamatsu, the work has a metaphorical and philosophical implications, suggesting the uniqueness and mutability of identity. By contrast, Cube (1968) toys with geometry and perspective by adding white perspective lines to the surface of a black wooden cube, creating the illusion that the cube is transparent. 

Takamatsu’s historic works will be in dialogue with two series of paintings by Manley, both of which derive from his meditation practice and his interest in Mono-Ha and older Japanese representational traditions. With his Times paintings, Manley writes out all the words contained on the front page of a specific daily edition of the newspaper using multicolored watercolor pencils on canvas. He writes vertically and horizontally, creating a grid out of the text. When the canvas is filled with text, he applies a layer of silver-tinted wash, further abstracting the work from the news. 

Alongside these paintings, we will show Manley’s highly textured Elegy paintings, characterized by short, rhythmic, repetitive strokes, which relate to a mindful focus on the process of painting itself, and occasional drifting transgressive lines, which signal moments of distraction. Like Takamatsu’s Loose of Net works, Manley’s Elegies often start with a linear practice, which morphs into something much looser and expressionistic. Moreover, like the elder artist’s Shadow paintings, Manley’s abstractions often transcend their own materiality and enter into a poetic space of memory and representation.

For a preview of works, click here.

Dashiell Manley, NYT. SUNDAY, JULY 14, 2020 | Dashiell Manley, some ponds (drained, defeated but better off), 2020