JUNKO YAMAMOTO
COSMIC WEB

AUGUST 3 - 26, 2023
OPENING RECEPTION - FIRST THURSDAY, AUGUST 3 2023, FROM 5-8PM
ARTIST MEET & GREET - SATURDAY, AUGUST 19, FROM 1-4PM

J. Rinehart Gallery is delighted to announce our first solo exhibition with Seattle based painter and soft sculpture installation artist, Junko Yamamoto. Her exhibition, Cosmic Web, brings together a collection of abstract paintings that contemplate the energy that binds together all of existence, from the vast — the air, the universe — to the microscopic — molecules, cells — to make it one.

The concept All is one — that everything is interconnected — forms the underlying basis for Junko Yamamoto’s exhibition, Cosmic Web.

These works employ the application of colors and shapes to fabric objects large and small in multiple layers of printing and feed backing with painting to express time and space, human consciousness, and connection with the universe.

Of her work Yamamoto states: “Though they may seem to exist discreetly, individual people’s consciousness and thought are in a certain way connected through space. If we posit that a state of linkage characterizes people’s thought and consciousness, then I should be able to assert that the consciousness and thought existing within myself as a matter of course also constitutes a part of that which connects everything.”

Junko Yamamoto was born and raised in Tokyo, Japan. After studying abroad, Yamamoto earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, from Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle. In 2015 she received an Emerging Artist Grant Award from the Allied Arts Foundation, a GAP (Grants for Artist Projects) Award from Artist Trust, and an invitation to the Professional Artist-in- Residence Program at the Pratt Fine Arts Center. In 2018 as a member of the Japanese artist collective Art Beasties she participated in group exhibitions at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum. Her work can be found in various public and private collections in the US and Japan.

In conjunction with the exhibition, an exhibition catalog will be published with an essay written by writer, Jack Johnston. 

• ARTIST STATEMENT

  Exhibition Statement
  Cosmic Web

  Delving into matters of space and consciousness;

  My work contemplates the energy that binds together all of existence, from the vast — the air, the universe — to the microscopic — molecules, cells — to make it one.

  Our physical bodies, as well as nature in all its forms — the trees, the plants — are made up of cells, molecules, elementary particles, regardless of their necessity. The interspace between cells that form the human body, and even spaces that look empty at first glance, like a living room’s negative space; might these not all be individual instances of the energy that binds together the existent world?

  Though they may seem to exist discreetly, individual people’s consciousness and thought are in a certain way connected through space. If we posit that a state of linkage characterizes people’s thought and consciousness, then I should be able to assert that the consciousness and thought existing within myself as a matter of course also constitutes a part of that which connects everything.

  These works employ the application of colors and shapes to fabric objects large and small in multiple layers of printing and feed backing with painting to express time and space, human consciousness, and connection with the universe.

  The concept All is one — that everything is interconnected — forms the underlying basis for my work.

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