PURE FORM
An Installation by Kazuo Kadonaga SUYAMA SPACE
KADONAGA IN SEATTLE
By Josine lanco Starrells

    Kadonaga's wood, bamboo and paper works at Suyama Space are grouped in different configurations than they were when I saw them in previous exhibitions. Each installation changes the context and that in turn, shifts the emphasis causing the familiar to be perceived quite literally, in a new light.
    Suyanna Space's impressive rectangular room with its roughly hewn wood floor and cleanly designed walls surrounds the viewer with Kadonaga's sensibility, no matter how he or she may choose to move. As you enter, you face the slightly leaning, vertical columns of shiny brown bamboo whose commanding presence establishes the work's conquest of the space. Once the viewer has entered, various natural forms of wood, bamboo and paper wrap around him/her, each of them offering its own enchantment. These pieces, born In Japan, have traveled widely in the United States and Europe for a number of years; distances and changes in geography matter only to the extent that climate comes to bear on the work ? because fluctuations in heat and humidity greatly affect the materials chosen by the artist. Time is also a crucial factor in the process of natural transformation occurring in these pieces; accumulation of time compounds climatic variations and can change the appearance as well as the structure of many of these works, divulging their own most salient properties and the singular manner in which they react to external stimuli. Thus the heart of their matter is revealed and to a certain extent their past history as well.
    Kadonaga's works in glass disclose the glass-ness of glass. They are now in residence at Greg Kucera's spacious gallery, uncovering their luminescent color, bulbous form and sleek texture to Seattle where so many have worked for so long with glass, blowing it, casting it and fashioning it into objects of bright pride.
    Kadonaga's glass work is only about glass ? he worked for ten years to find a way of letting the material speak for itself ? by itself.
    Josine Ianco Starrells. a curator with a long history in Los Angeles, has watched Kadonaga’s work evolve many years.

PURE FORM
By Beth Sellars Curator

Acknowledging the lack of alternative spaces in Seattle Suyama Space in partnership with Space. City has staged fifteen sited installations since 1998. Artists, charged with responding to the gallery's unique physical characteristics in their sited installations, have demonstrated a variety of distinctive voices. The current show of Kazuo Kadonaga brings new meaning to a merged sensibility of materials and space. The wood, bamboo and paper artworks resonate with the gallery's surrounding timbered floor and ceiling of natural materials. The work feels as though it were created specifically for the gallery space. We are privileged to experience this synchronization of mind and materials.
    The works at Suyama Space have traveled together in different configurations throughout the world for a number of years. The glass sculptures shown at the Greg Kucera Gallery's corresponding exhibition began to travel with the other works a few years ago. Earlier exhibits in Tokyo. Kyoto. The Netherlands. and Stockholm came to the West Coast in the early l980s when Ed Lau. owner of the Space Gallery and Josine lanco Starrells, director of the Municipal Art Gallery in Los Angeles began to show his work extensively. Two years ago, Ric Collier, director at Salt Lake Art Center and Hirokazu Kosaka, gallery director at the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center in Los Angeles organized all the traveling works that were subsequently brought to Seattle via the Schneider Museum of Art in Ashland. Oregon.
    Bringing Kazuo Kadonaga to Seattle has reunited many old friends and associations, created collaborations, and introduced new audiences to the beauty of the artist's work. We are grateful to Kazuo Kadonaga for his intuitive vision, gentle touch and warm humor: to Yumiko Kadonaga who made complex correspondence and shipping arrangements proceed smoothly with her warmth, grace and excellent bilingual ability: to Rik Collier and Josine Starrells who played numerous roles in making the project possible; and to Greg Kucera, whose support and collaboration made exposure possible for Kadonaga’s remarkable glass sculptures. We are very thankful for the major funding provided by the Allen Foundation for the Arts, the Washington State Art Commission and Suyama Peterson Deguchi Architects.