Kou Kana (Kana Yoshida) Exhibition

Archive: Ocean Blue, Forest Green

Contemporary artist Kana Kou (1975-2020) exhibition is to be held in the city of Kamakura, an old historic town, only an hour away from Tokyo. Along with her number of works, another artist Takahiro Iwasaki will be showing works as a special guest artist.

Kou worked in her earlier career in various artist-in residence programs around the world such as Los Angeles and Fiskars in Finland.  She started to appear in exhibitions since 2010 in the name of “Kana Yoshida” until changing her name to “Kana Kou” in 2016.  She participated in many exhibitions with different works until her death in the end of February 2020. The artist was creating her works using her whole body through her fieldwork and left behind with large amount of works, drawings and material all of which still have large impact on us to feel the artist’s energy of life.  Starting with mountain climbing, she learned diving to draw ocean, and even dreamed of traveling outside the earth to draw outside the universe. In this exhibition, we will be showing more than 100 works and drawings by the artist who has lived her life using all the energy she had.  We hope that the audience would meet the works, along with the sea and the view the artists was seeing daily, feeling the natural season of Kamakura.

Before the exhibition, we have provided Takahiro Iwasaki, who was a good friend of the artist since her schooldays, with material and fragment of unfinished works by Kana Kou. Iwasaki would be showing his new works in the memory of Kou Kana using her material. Though such collaboration, we hope that Kana Kou’s embers of life would keep on shining brighter for longer period of time.

Organizers: Hiroshi Tachiwana and Takako Yoshida

curated and coordinated by：ArtTank

venue：SIMPLE HOUSE＿ Inamuragasaki, Kamakura City, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan

AM 11:00 - PM 5:00 open every day during the exhibition period

train: 11 minutes from Kamakura station by Enoden Line

car: facing National Route 134, next to public parking space

Kana Kou (Kana Yoshida): born 1975, Tokyo.  Passed away in the end of February 2020. Selected exhibitions: 2020 Garden of Life, Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum, Tokyo, Oct. 17 – Jan. 12, 2021 / 2016 ArtMeets 03, Arts Maebashi, Tochigi / 2014 MOT Annual 2014, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo/ 2013 Visions of Contemporary Art 2013, Ueno Royal Museum, Tokyo / 2013 Setouchi Triennale 2013, Shodoshima, Kagawa / 2011 solo exhibition, Project N 44, Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery

Takahiro Iwasaki：born 1975, Hiroshima.  Using daily material such as toothbrushes, bookmarks, and towels, the artists creates transmission towers and cranes to compose them into landscapes.  Selected as the representative of Japanese National Pavilion artist in Venice Biennale in 2017.

Kou Kana’s works are also in view at Garden of Life: Eight Contemporary Artists Venture into Nature, held at Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Museum Dates: Oct. 17, 2020 to Jan. 12, 2021   https://www.teien-art-museum.ne.jp/en/