Disloyal Devotion (Primary Title)
Shirley Kaneda, American, born Japan, born 1951 (Artist)
It’s not that I don’t believe in the principle of unity, quite the contrary. I just don’t believe in the presence of a harmonious unity where the parts become sacrificed for the sake of it. –Shirley Kaneda
Kaneda’s paintings address philosophical and social concepts of individuality, hybridity, and uncertainty, which refer as much to human relationships as to the rapidly changing status of images in the late 20th century. Her montage-like paintings position fragments of found and invented colors, shapes, and patterns in condensed and shifting spaces. The forms abut precariously, their artifice enhanced by sharp colors. The language of abstraction recalls New York School painting of the 1950s, but here presented as an impure subversion of that heroic modernism that might be termed a “disloyal devotion.”
Shirley Kaneda: New Paintings, Feigen Contemporary, New York, NY, 1998
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