Yuko Murata
Easter, 2010, oil on canvas, 24.2 x 33.3 cm, photo by Kentaro Takioka, courtesy of the artist and Gallery Side 2.
Just a couple of blocks away from Take Ninagawa, Gallery Side 2 is showing the new oil paintings of Yuko Murata. Murata’s subject matter of choice is patently representational—animals, plants and landscapes, but despite their mimetic nature her images seem to go beyond what is immediately shown in them. These remarkably restrained oils have an almost Symbolist (think Puvis de Chavannes) ring to them, they display the silence and the melancholy normally foreign to contemporary art. The animals and plants function first and foremost as motifs that prompt Murata’s oneiric improvisations.
