Opening Receptions: 

 

October 20, 6-8pm

Ethan Cohen New York

14 Jay St

New York, NY 10011

 

 

 

This exhibition “ACTION POP” will feature Shinohara’s explosive spirit and powerful mastery of painting, drawing, collage which he combines to make this new body of works that he calls “Blow by Blow - New Action Painting ”. It combines the artist’s famous action painting, drawing and his love of 3D Pop.

Shinohara, born in Koji-machi Tokyo in 1932, was one of theradical artists of Japan’s post-war era. He co-founded the Neo DadaismOrganizers Group, one of the most avant-garde collectives in the late 1950’ and 1960’s. In 1960, in front of journalists, including Nobel PrizeLaureate- Oe Kenzaburo, Shinohara sporting a Mohawk and stripped to the waist, cut his white t-shirt, wrapped his hands to form makeshift boxing gloves, dipped them in paint and went on to hit the paper on the

studio walls. Shinohara invented performative boxing painting. Shinohara says he was in pursuit of “pure action” an ephemeral art form that was a critical departure from Abstract Expressionism. The curator Reiko Tomii writes “... this distinguished Shinohara from other artists like Jackson Pollock, George Mathieu and Gutai’s Shiraga Kazuo, who also used action to create paintings.”

In 1963-64, Shinohara, created a new genre of Pop Art- "Imitation Pop” which was inspired by images of art works by Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns and other pop artists seen in Japanese art magazines. Shinohara was the forerunner to the anime artists Takashi Murakami and Yoshitomo Nara.

A Rockefeller Foundation grant brought Shinohara to New York City in 1969. In New York, he and his wife Noriko, a distinguished painter in her own right, have lived a bohemian life dedicated to making art. Currently a documentary film is being producing on this dynamic couple titled “Cutie and The Boxer”.

Ushio Shinohara’s work is in the permanent collections- Museum of Modern Art, NYC; Yokohama Museum; Tokyo Metropolitan Museum; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Nagaoka; Hyogo Prefecture Museum, Kobe; Tokyo City Museum; Miyagi Museum of Art; Tochigi Prefecture Museum of Fine Art; Meguro Museum; Takamatsu City Museum of Art; Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art.

Shinohara has been an active and an internationally acclaimed artist for over half a century. Shinohara was featured in the seminal 1994 Guggenheim exhibition and publication “Scream Against the Sky”, curated by Alexandra Munroe. In 2008 Shinohara was honored with a solo exhibition at the Toyota Municipal Museum of Art in Aichi Japan. In 2009 he was included in the Seattle Art Museum’s exhibition “Target Practice: Painting Under Attack 1949-78”.

Shinohara has been invited to perform his Action Boxing-Painting in such places as the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; The Museum of Modern Art in Kanagawa, Japan; the “Et l’Art Se Met Au Monde Prologue Pour La Biennale” at the Institut d’Art Contemporain Frac Rhone-Aipes / Nouveau Musee, Villeurbanne; the Getty Museum in LA. In 2006 in New York City, Ethan Cohen Fine Arts hosted the performance “Action Painting Battle”. Now Ethan Cohen Fine Arts is proud to hold Shinohara’s 3rd one-man exhibition.