Kyoko Kanda is a London-based artist who is drawing attention to her paintings, which depict apparently 'unknowable' objects removed from context. The 'objects' often are personae, though only just. In her painted portraits -- including self-portraits -- Kanda uses the device of decontextualisaton to some effect. Floating, coiffeured heads turned away from the viewer seem to invite myriad interpretations and readings in terms of the other, the unconscious, silence, horror, madness, even the unsaid.
In the late 50s Jacques Lacan presented the idea of ‘objet petit a’ as the unreal ‘part-object’; an entity removed from the body as a whole. Kanda’s doppelganger-like motifs have the attributes of this lack; the remainder of the real -- the mere appearance of some secret requiring explanation or interpretation -- the unattainable object of desire.
The diaphanous surface of these paintings, their fluidity, economy of paint and visible brushstrokes pay homage to Japanese painterly tradition. In addition the picture plane often reveals a painting beneath a painting -- palimpsest layers in the form of light from a doorway or a glowing geometric shape appear beneath the promontory object. Images in the background may actually be painted on top of the foreground, resulting in subtle disorientation in terms of depth of field and focal point.
Kyoko Kanda was born in 1977 in Japan and currently lives and works in London. She graduated in 2007 from Goldsmiths College, University of London and has exhibited in Duesseldorf, Tokyo and London.
Kyoko Kanda. 10 May-5 July 2008, Union Gallery, Teesdale Street , London E2
