NEW YORK — Just opened at Fergus McCaffrey is the first-ever joint exhibition of the pioneering Japanese Gutai artist Kazuo Shiraga and his wife Fujiko.Currently enjoying a spate of renewed attention in the U.S. thanks to the ongoing museum survey exhibition “Between Action and the Unknown: The Art of Kazuo Shiraga and Sadamasa Motonaga,” hosted by the Dallas Museum of Art, Kazuo Shiraga is known for his performative, large-scale foot-paintings created using his own feet while swinging from a rope suspended above his canvas. Shiraga is also known as a seminal member of the avant-garde painting collective Zero Society, which he co-founded with Saburo Murakami and Akira Kanayama before joining Jiro Yoshihara’s Gutai group in 1955.Far less known, however, are the paintings of his wife Fujiko Uemura, who married Shiraga in 1948 before joining first the Zero Society, and then the Gutai Art Association together with her husband in 1955.“Kazuo and Fujiko Shiraga” is the first in-depth exhibition to juxtapose the works of Kazuo Shiraga with those of his wife, including 15 early works by Fujiko dating from 1955-1961 that were only recently rediscovered following Kazuo’s death in 2008.These include her singular interpretations of Gutai founder Yoshihara’s exhortations to his compatriots to “create what has never been done before” — in Fujiko’s case, shambolic, multi-layered collages of torn paper, concrete sculptures, and wooden pieces such as “White Plank,” a 13 foot long plank of wood bisected by a long, meandering cut. Subsequent experimentations led her to work with wax, broken shards of glass, and various pigments on canvas, although she soon abandoned her own practice in order to play a supporting role to her husband’s own.“Kazuo and Fujiko Shiraga” runs at Fergus McCaffrey from April 30 through June 20, 2015.Follow @ARTINFOJapan
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