Kanda & Oliveira is pleased to announce the dual exhibition Layers, with works by artists Michiko Inami and Barao Hanno, marking their first exhibition with the gallery.
Both pursuing a way of looking at things that others have not yet discovered, Michiko Inami and Barao Hanno evolve within the layers of the art world, in a style quite reminiscent of surrealism either in its form or its method.
Barao Hanno, a painter living in the forest, creates bigger scale compositions echoing to theatres and stages. In Hanno’s works, nature is celebrated, human forms are assembled with plants and insects, and the colours are applied in thin layers, by mixing watercolor and acrylic. Because faces are considered to make too strong of an impression on the artist, when venturing into more figurative works, inspiration would always come from a familiar place. Nevertheless, their gaze seem to constantly escape us.
On the other hand, in Michiko Inami’s works, the viewer is immersed in depths of abstract shapes of black, white and gray. In an interesting methodology, the feeling of drawing is made valuing coincidence and unconsciousness, through the act of erasing, sometimes scratching, hiding, drawing, correcting over and over again. Initially well versed into three-dimensional works incorporating textiles or metal plates, the artist switched to two-dimensional works around twenty years ago, pushed by the will to further harness the power of nature as an invisible entity. As a result, a sense of three-dimensionality and colour still shines through her creations inspired by scenes of daily life.
Within these layers, Michiko Inami and Barao Hanno practices are connected to the world as we know it, to a future that is yet to be discovered, perhaps even a world in-between, and ultimately, depict a very human quest which is that of freedom.
