Works by Kim Uchiyama
Kim Uchiyama is an American abstract artist whose works use color to create light and form which activate the metaphysical potential of pictorial space.
She lives and works in New York.
Education and Awards
Uchiyama studied art and literature at Drake University in Des Moines, IA and pre-Renaissance art history in Florence, Italy. She has studied art at Yale’s Summer School of Art & Music, Queens College and the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture. Her fellowships include the New York Foundation for the Arts, the MacDowell Colony, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Auvillar, France and BAU Institute, Otranto, Italy. She is a member of American Abstract Artists.
Technique
Uchiyama’s watercolors convey brimming bands of enigmatic light. She employs saturated color to establish an overarching chorus, each band delineating its unique voice.The precise arrangement, like notes of a song, transfers energy from one moment to the next.
Uchiyama works with watercolor on Arches paper and oil paint on canvas and linen. She develops multiple images simultaneously. To begin each work, she waits to “see” an initial color on the blank surface before applying it to her ground. Each consecutive color builds on that original impulse to create a grid comprised of color shapes. Each layer possesses unique physical and material properties: some are opaque; others translucent; some are painterly; others flat. Each choice the artist makes serves to create a dynamic, multi-faceted composition that invites the viewer’s eye to move along with her and experience the way the painting was made.
Inspiration
One of Uchiyama’s inspirations was her teacher, the painter Nicolas Carone, who had himself studied with Modernist master Hans Hofmann. Uchiyama shares the emphasis that Carone and Hofmann placed on color, pictorial space and the architecture of painting. She mobilizes these elements in her compositions to create a singular tension, harmony and rhythm. Uchiyama is frequently inspired by the light and atmosphere of a specific place or landscape encountered in her travels. She uses color to communicate an emotive essence or feeling of that place - its light and shadow, its weight.
Art critic Michelle Aldredge says: “Patient, attentive viewers will find a lot to enjoy in Uchiyama’s paintings. Layers bubble beneath layers, colors recede or emerge from the canvas. Music is a useful parallel, since Uchiyama creates variations on a theme, much like a composer or jazz musician would–texture, rhythm, timbre, and harmony are integral to each piece.”
Relevant Quotes
Art critic Michelle Aldredge says about Uchiyama's work: “Patient, attentive viewers will find a lot to enjoy in Uchiyama’s paintings. Layers bubble beneath layers, colors recede or emerge from the canvas. Music is a useful parallel, since Uchiyama creates variations on a theme, much like a composer or jazz musician would–texture, rhythm, timbre, and harmony are integral to each piece.”
Exhibitions
Uchiyama has exhibited extensively in solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States, with recent solo exhibitions at Fox Gallery, NY, NY, Headwater Contemporary, Telluride, CO, and Kathryn Markel Fine Arts, Bridgehampton, NY.
Upcoming solo exhibitions include John Davis Gallery, Hudson, NY and Galleria Agora, Palermo, Italy. Uchiyama’s work has been reviewed in ARTNews, The Brooklyn Rail, The New Criterion, Hyperallergic magazine and The New York Times.
Solo Exhibitions
2019 (forthcoming)
John Davis Gallery, Hudson, NY
Galleria Agora, Palermo, Italy
2014
Fox Gallery, New York, NY, “Plain Sight”
2013
Headwater Contemporary, Telluride, CO
John Davis Gallery, Hudson, NY, “Recent Paintings”
2012
Kathryn Markel Fine Arts, Bridgehampton, NY, “Water Color”
2010
Lohin Geduld Gallery, New York, NY, “Archaeo”
2008
Lohin Geduld Gallery, New York, NY, “Recent Work”
John Davis Gallery, Hudson, NY, “Recent Work”
2006
Janet Kurnatowski Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, “Strata”
2004
Penine Hart Gallery, New York, NY, “Recent Work”
2000
Percival Galleries, Des Moines, IA, “Recent Work”
1990
Cedarcrest College, Allentown, PA, “Landscape”,
1989
John Davis Gallery, New York, NY, “New Works”,
1988
Leslie Cecil Gallery, New York, NY, “New Landscapes”
1986
John Davis Gallery, Akron, OH
1985
Leslie Cecil Gallery, New York, NY
Group Exhibitions
2018
Clara M. Eagle Gallery, Murray State University, Murray, Kentucky, “Blurring Boundaries: Continuity to Change, Women of AAA from 1937 to 2017”
Ewing Gallery, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, “Blurring Boundaries: Continuity to Change, Women of AAA from 1937 to 2017”
Westbeth Gallery, New York, NY, “Beyond Black and White”
2017
The Curator Gallery, New York, NY, “Color Perspective”
2016
The Painting Center, New York, NY, “Band”
Washington Printmakers Gallery, Washington, DC, “Werner Drewes and 80 Years of the American Abstract Artists”
Shirley Fiterman Art Center, Borough of Manhattan Community College, New York, NY, “Chromatic Space”
Rush Arts Gallery, New York, NY, “21st Century Abstract Painting and Sculpture”
1285 Avenue of the Americas Art Gallery, NY, “The Onward of Art”
Morris-Warren Gallery, New York, NY, “Visible Histories”
2015
FiveMyles Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, “Endless Entire”
Janet Kurnatowski Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, “Wave Length”
2014
Brian Morris Midtown, New York, NY, “Freak Flag”
Sideshow Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, “To Leo, A Tribute from American Abstract Artists”
490 Atlantic Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, “Scott Endsley, Richard Timperio and Kim Uchiyama”
Frank Martin Gallery, Muhlenberg College, Allentown, PA, “Girl Band”
2013
Brian Morris Gallery, New York, NY, “Sleight of Hand”
2012
Jason McCoy Gallery, New York, NY, “Paper Band”
2011
Lohin Geduld Gallery, New York, NY, “Rotation”
2010
Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY, “Color, Time, Space”
2009
Lohin Geduld Gallery, New York, NY, “Color, Time, Space”
Janet Kurnatowski Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, “Color, Time, Space”
Janet Kurnatowski Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, “Inside Abstraction”
2008
San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts, San Angelo, TX, ”Edward R. Broida: A Collector On the Edge”
2005
New York Studio School, New York, NY, “The Continuous Mark: 40 Years of the New York Studio School”, curated by Jen Samet
2004
Gallery Schlesinger, New York, NY, “First Person”
1987
Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, IA, “Artists Born In Iowa: The Homecoming Exhibition”, organized by the Iowa Arts Council, curated by Eleanor Heartney
2018
Buhmann, Stephanie. “New York Studio Conversations II”, The Green Box, Berlin, May 2018.
2016
Lippincott, Jonathan D. “Chromatic Space: American Abstract Artists”, Exhibition Brochure Essay, 2016.
Wilkin, Karen. “The Onward of Art: American Abstract Artists 80th Anniversary Exhibition”, Exhibition Catalogue Essay, 2016.
2014
Buhmann, Stephanie. “Girl Band”, Muhlenberg College Exhibition Catalogue Essay, 2014.
2010
Wei, Lilly. “Kim Uchiyama: Archaeo”, Exhibition Catalogue Essay, 2010.
1986
Heartney, Eleanor. “Toward An Expanded Regionalism”, Artists Born In Iowa: The Homecoming Exhibition, Exhibition Catalogue Essay, 1986.
Stetson, Daniel E. “Of Recognition & Reknowing”, Artists Born in Iowa: The Homecoming Exhibition, Exhibition Catalogue Essay, 1986.