Noriko KURAFUJI / CAREER
1972 Born in Tokyo, Japan 1994 Graduated from Joshibi University of Art and Design - Best Graduation Work Award 1996 Graduated from Graduate School of Joshibi University of Art and Design
Member of Federation of Japanese Artist Member of CAF.N (Contemporary Art Festival,Nebula) Member of Association of Modern Art
Comment on Noriko KURAFUJI‘s ‘Nagare - Frieze of Spring‐1’ Art Critic Hiroshi SHINOHARA
On the screen of the perfect square, a brilliant pink is wriggling. It looks like the photograph which was taken by missing the focus, or petals which are being violently scattered by storm in the spring.
The painting gives us the impression that petals are streaming. And , by this artist’s representation of such an impression, the intense inside of an artist or every creature has successfully been condensed and then fixed into an abstraction molding.
The flowers in a bunch, facing arbitrarily to their own favorite directions, are as whimsical and clean as a girl. An apostle of the art is playing with freedom and a pureness, and longing for just the beauty. It is because the artist may surely believe the development and evolution of the beauty.
It seems to me that Kurafuji’s small allover wall has nearly frozen up in it the moment that fragrant petals have been reformed into fluids moving at speed and are rustling under the shower of the light.
This is a petite miracle woven from the light and the wind. When you gaze at the painting, supposedly, you will feel that a gentle touch and a living tremor rise up like air heated by the sunbeams through the trees. On the other hand, the painting will provide us with an image that petals are tempted toward the darkness by the bush of leaves or, if they refuse, are dragged into the depths. The image, that might be going to warp beyond the space-time, resembles closely the world seen with half an eye and exists in the boundary of dream and reality.
There is a Japanese language “Hanaikada” which means a flowers’ raft. It is an elegant word that represents a bunch of flowing cherry petals as a raft. And, at the same time, the flow of full fluid water will provide us with a special sense able to perceive not only a refreshing feeling but also the early summer season. Well, I want to know how such factors will be actually found by audience in the picture which was imaged and painted by this artist.
