Originally trained as an architect, Chizuru Morri Kaplan (b. 1954, Japan) channels the profession’s zeal for precision and perspective into saturated renderings of worlds worth inhabiting.
Whereas architectural drawings typically propose hypothetical futures, Kaplan relishes the present and demonstrates the intense mystery and magic of our existing structures. With an architect’s eye, she extols every eave, bevel, and cornice. Buildings become subjects and sculptures come alive. Places are personas.
Hugo Galerie presents “Sous le Ciel de Paris,” a solo exhibition of the exquisitely articulated watercolors of Chizuru Morii Kaplan.
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Paris, Manhattan, Venice. These are Kaplan’s paramours. She depicts them as an artist illustrates an unassuming and unnoticed glimpse of a lover: her profile, her shoulder, the curve of her neck in the rain-filtered sunlight. Kaplan transmits the allure and seduction of an intimate encounter onto a portion of architectural relief. Her paintings are portraits.
The most angular edifices become supple under her gaze. Rooftops drip and stone melts. It is like falling in love all over again with the simple reflection of your sweetheart. Grandeur leaks. Elegance seeps. Light and shadow unravel into trailing vines of vision. The artist’s partial vistas of buildings and monuments encourage viewers to imagine the entire vantage and engulf her audience. And all the while, they ripple.
Kaplan’s mastery of the watercolor medium is mesmerizing. Life becomes lithe and ledges lissom. Her works convey the accuracy of a photograph through the bubbling movement of drenching rain. Her sublime waterworlds cannot be still. They dance. And, like the best music, you lose yourself in them.
For more details about “Sous le Ciel de Paris,” please visit HugoGalerie.com.
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