Piero Golia: Kanazawa (5 yellow blocks)
This woodcut by Piero Golia belongs to a 2018 series of traditional Japanese woodblock prints made in collaboration with artisans from Japan’s Mie prefecture overseen by Kyoto-based studio Kamisoe. Printed on washi paper produced by Yoshiki Yamaguchi, the series bridges abstraction and figuration, formally and conceptually reimagining established aesthetics and techniques by repurposing multiple woodblocks already carved for earlier ukiyo-e prints. Designing his own compositions and printing in single colors—here rendering fragmented maplike shapes in a bright primary yellow—before adding his personal seal, Golia integrates traditional and contemporary approaches.
Known as a “sculptor of situations,” Golia aims to expand the possibilities of art via heterogeneous strategies and processes that share the capacity to alter viewers’ perception, even when they leave no objects or images behind. For an exhibition at Kunsthaus Baselland, Switzerland, in 2017, he realized the kinetic sculpture The Painter, which featured a robot programmed to paint geometric shapes whenever it detected movement within the exhibition space; Kanazawa (5 yellow blocks), too, subverts expectations of abstraction’s origins and aims.
Artist: Piero Golia
Date: 2018
Medium: Woodcut on washi paper
Dimensions: Unframed: 17 × 11 inches (43.2 × 27.9 cm); Framed: 20 3/4 × 14 7/8 × 1 1/2 inches (52.7 × 37.8 × 3.8 cm)
Edition: Edition 7/12 + 1 AP
Printer: Kamisoe, Kyoto, Japan
Publisher: Ordinary Flame
Framed: Sold framed
