ART OF KYOTO

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Announcing “collaboration”

NEW YORK — Onishi Gallery is proud to present “col­lab­o­ra­tion”, a two-person show of art­works by Kyoto Gold Leaf Mas­ter Hiroto Rakusho and New York fash­ion designer Ralph Rucci. Four large scale works painted in acrylic by Rucci on gold, bronze or sil­ver leaf pan­els cre­ated by Rakusho, mark a rich, nuanced, cross-cultural under­stand­ing. Each artist’s recent per­sonal works express his unique artis­tic vision: Rucci’s works with hid­den lay­ers of mean­ing and bold, kinetic dynamism; Rakusho’s reflect­ing a con­tin­u­ing fas­ci­na­tion with the moon and the many col­ors of heated sil­ver metal leaf – which change over time.

Ralph Rucci (bio, cv) was born in Philadel­phia in 1956. He majored in Phi­los­o­phy at Tem­ple Uni­ver­sity, and stud­ied Fash­ion Design at the Fash­ion Insti­tute of Tech­nol­ogy in New York. For almost 30 years, he has been work­ing with the most lux­u­ri­ous fab­rics and spe­cial­ized col­lab­o­ra­tors in the world, cre­at­ing women’s cloth­ing con­sid­ered by many to be wear­able art. He has been a painter for more than 30 years, with four solo shows since 2005.

Hiroto Rakusho (bio, cv) was born in Kyoto in 1962. He appren­ticed with his father, Jisaku Nishiyama, win­ner of the City of Kyoto Award for Out­stand­ing Tech­ni­cal Con­tri­bu­tion to Tra­di­tional Hand­i­crafts, and was cer­ti­fied by the Min­istry of Econ­omy, Trade and Indus­try as a Mas­ter of Tra­di­tional Hand­i­crafts in 1997. He has worked to expand metal leaf design as an art form, col­lab­o­rat­ing with artists and stu­dents from diverse back­grounds in Japan and abroad. Since 2005, he has held three solo shows, two in Kyoto muse­ums and one in New York. Rakusho is an inte­gral part of dig­i­tal archive projects in Kyoto, which use dig­i­tal tech­niques to repro­duce aged ancient art­works on paper stored away in Kyoto’s muse­ums, shrines and tem­ples. This has taken him to Amer­i­can muse­ums, mak­ing repro­duc­tions which return famous Japan­ese art­works back for pub­lic view­ing. (Non-profit Kyoto Cul­ture Asso­ci­a­tion which admin­is­ters this pro­gram, will receive 10% of the pro­ceeds from sales of this exhibition.)

View Art­works:

Gallery of Col­lab­o­ra­tion between Ruc­chi and Rakusho

Gallery of Hiroto Rakusho’s artworks

Gallery of Ralph Rucci’s artworks

Gallery of Ralph Rucci’s fash­ion works

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