Ko Kirk Yamahira: Fractions

This month, the gallery is pleased to exhibit Seattle-based artist Ko Kirk Yamahira in Fractions. Yamahira is well known for creating two and three-dimensional forms from canvas. His work is a tactile and unusual approach to minimalism, involving the removal of individual threads from the weave of the canvas in order to create gentle compositions that drape freely. In deconstructing his paintings, he converts surface into form and presents new ways to see classically modern shapes. His work inhabits the entire space, hanging from wall and ceiling, revealing the original bones of the painting while creating softer, elegantly draping forms.

Yamahira was born in Los Angeles and raised in Tokyo and London before moving to Seattle from New York in 2015. He has exhibited in galleries in the United States, Canada, and Japan, both individually and as a member of the artist collectives SOIL and Art Beasties. In 2018, Yamahira had his first solo museum show at the Frye Museum in Seattle, curated by Amanda Donnan. That same year, he exhibited in a group show with Art Beasties, a Japanese art collective based in New York City, at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum. This year, Yamahira has exhibited at Deluge Contemporary Art in Victoria, BC; the Community Education Gallery at the Bellevue Arts Museum in Bellevue, WA; and the San Francisco and Seattle Art Fairs represented by the Russo Lee Gallery. As a result, his work was acquired by the Frye Art Museum earlier this fall.