An exciting exhibition featuring the printmaking of Michiko Suzuki is coming up this week!

Michiko Suzuki: Floating World 1 (Time Like Air)

FLOATING WORLD
April 24th to May 24th, 2008
Opening reception Thursday, April 24th, 6 – 8:00 pm
Bellevue Gallery
 2475 Bellevue Avenue, West Vancouver, BC

These excerpts from the invitation brochure say it best:

Michiko Suzuki is a Tokyo based artist active in Japan since 1975. In 2002, she was invited as a visiting artist in the Printmaking department at the University of Alberta, and then in 2003 was invited as the first artist-residence in the printmaking department of Capilano College, N.Vancouver, BC. There she worked on a collaboration with printmaking faculty Wayne Eastcott. They exhibited the results in 2003, 2005, and 2006 in Tokyo, Japan and Vancouver, Canada.

She immigrated to Canada in 2006 (permanent residence status) and is living and working in Greater Vancouver. This is her first solo exhibition at a commercial gallery in Canada.

This exhibition’s title “Floating world” comes from the Japanese UKIYO-E (referring to Japanese traditional wood cuts). It means “Picture of the present”. UKIYO literally translates as, “Floating world”. Therefore, the theme is “Present life looks like a transient dream.”

Suzuki’s work is based on her perception of a world in which the sense of space and distance is shrinking, not only in the physical world but also in terms of the mental space that people tend to inhabit in a fast-paced urban society. She considers that the demands of contemporary life leave too little space for meditation, or the possibility of contemplating the present moment, resulting in humans being out of balance. As a response to this condition Suzuki incorporates empty space within much of her recent works. (Richard Noyce)

For that reason, Suzuki composes works that include elements of the past, present and future. She also employs another dimension (surreal image) that fits well with her work’s space, and deals with the connection between Reality and Illusion.

Michiko Suzuki: I Am Suddenly Transported Here

More examples of Michiko’s work may be seen on the Bellevue Gallery site under ‘Gallery Artists’.
Michiko is a friend and a fellow artist working in the same printmaking studio. She has been a subject of several blogposts here regarding her collaborations with Wayne Eastcott:
August 2004
October 2005
September 2006
October 2006

INTERCONNNECTION, Wayne Eastcott and Michiko Suzuki’s collaborative printmaking project is opening in Bellevue Gallery next week. This is a recently opened new gallery that is celebrating its grand opening with this exhibition, to be introduced by renowned Canadian artist Gordon Smith.

OPENING: Thursday, September 28th, 2006 6:00 to 9:00 pm
Exhibition continues to October 29th, 2006
Bellevue Gallery, 2475 Bellevue Avenue, West Vancouver, BC

Some excerpts from the exhibition statement:

This exhibition is the result of a collaboration that we commenced in 2002. However, the first work was not complete until the fall of 2003 because we spent many months trying to really understand each other’s interests, ideas and aesthetics. We wanted it to be a true collaboration and not merely two artists working on the same piece of paper.

The project is called INTERCONNECTION because it represents an interconnection on many levels: between ourselves as individuals, our cultures (Canada/Japan), the classical and technological forms, even the paper (classic Japanese Washi or Western papers etc.). Finally the works are brought to completion by another interconnection: that between our pieces and the viewer.

Please read more about these two printmakers’ collaboration in two articles written on August 23rd, 2004 and October 31st, 2005.