NonakaHill
6917 Melrose
Avenue Los Angeles, CA 90038
Kazuo Kadonaga
February 11 - April 1,
2023
Nonaka-Hill
is delighted to present sculptures by Kazuo Kadonaga, his second solo
exhibition with the gallery. Spanning five decades, he has been singularly
known for conjuring the otherwise invisible properties of wood, silk, glass,
and paper. His meticulous approach limits the traces of his hand as much as
possible, deferring to the materialfs inner-structure and outer dignity to
guide his process. His work embodies shibui, an astringent and refined ion, an
astringent and refined aesthetic belied by raw complexity. As such, Kadonaga
does not aim for beauty, nor does he take his materials for granted, for it has
been his lifefs work to reveal their essential nature. In this exhibition,
Kadonaga and the gallery has focused on his small-scale cedar and cypress wood
sculptures dating from the early 1980s. They reveal the multitude of ways a
ubiquitous material can be renewed and estranged with minimal manipulation. To
achieve this, Kadonaga crosscut tree trunks into segments, each one measuring
one to two feet in length, and methodically removed their bark. He followed
with a series of cutting procedures unique to each segment: Several of which
took intersecting cuts forming a grid, while other works were sliced into thin
sheets of various thickness, which were then glued or tied into their original
shape. One segment took lengthwise cuts that resemble the pattern of cracked
glass in its cross-section, while another took long cuts on its side at a
shallow depth, allowing the man-made fissures to slowly bend apart over time.
Kadonaga squared some of his trunks, but they did not lose their integrity on
account of his skilled and ghostly hand: The rings on their cross-sections
serve as formal and conceptual counterpoints, highlighting naturefs propensity
towards curves and spirals as measurements of time. Timefs effects are
essential components in this work, as his sculptures continue to change
depending on their atmospheric conditions. Born in 1946 in Ishikawa, Japan,
Kadonaga was raised in a family that owned and operated a sawmill. He once said
that he chose wood, his first material, because it was the closest one at hand.
Originally trained as a painter, he decided to work with trees firsthand
instead of rendering their image. The works on view are thus manifestations of
Kadonagafs need to interact with wood, or any material, as directly as
possible, without agendas or imposed cultural implications; this is why he does
not consider himself to be a Japanese artist, but simply an artist that seeks
truth in materials in the most modest and direct methods possible.
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