Aya Uekawa
Monday, January 21st, 2008
Aya Uekawa , born in Tokyo and based in NYC where she’s currently chasing her MFA at Hunter College, the 29-year-old painter has managed to escape the ubiquitous “Superflat” imagery of her homeland to forge her own distinct technique by blending styles borrowed from the Flemish figurative masters and the decorative arts, resulting in a series of fascinating and obsessively rendered tableauxs that seem like stills from introspective dreamscapes. And while her work does contrast elements of three-dimensional portraiture with 2D background and clothing treatments, it’s in the style of the great European icon painters, rather than the graphic artists of her homeland.
