PRESS
2010
...Look at Kamiya (who has a second solo show up this month at Gallery NAGA). Her work is about dots, yes, but also about structure, pattern, space, volume, and her wonderfully refined color sense. She constructed "Pleas" in white and the palest shades of blue, green, and violet, each tone softer than a spring breeze. In such a breathy environment, her tiny pillars cast bold shadows, making this pastel-toned painting a gritty installation of itty-bitty sculptures.
"Dance," like many of Kamiya's paintings, features hints of intersecting circles, suggesting planetary orbits, or earthly latitudes and longitudes, barely visible in a sea of blue-green stalks. In her latest work, the organic "Trace," she applies green dots in clusters over the bare wood surface of her panel. It's a new approach; everywhere else, she covers her entire field. "Trace" breathes deep; it feels more improvisational, and that's a feat, given Kamiya's neurotically precise technique.
2009
2007
Masako Kamiya’s stubbly, colorful gouache works always remind me of the paper rolls studded with bright, sugar-candy dots I’d gobble up as a kid. She has a small show up at Gallery NAGA. Her technique hasn’t changed, but it continues to captivate: She builds up tiny dots of gouache laboriously into colorful little stalks, bristling over the page or canvas.
It’s a great method with which to explore subtle palette changes, as she does in the snowy “Emergence,” stippling her surface in the palest blues and pinks. Her smaller works on paper, such as “Transience,” take a different tack. Here, fire-engine red lurks under pale pinks and yellows, like a fierce rash itching under a pastel blouse.
2006
2005
Masako Kamiya continues to make paintings that bristle off the surface, and – as her show at Gallery NAGA indicates – her color sense is getting both more refined and more daring. The artist creates dots in colored gouache on panel and slowly builds upon each, dot by dot, creating stalks up to a quarter-inch tall. The texture is at once alluring and creepy.
In the past, Kamiya has made canvases that looked like three-dimensional sprays of confetti. Here, each piece has a tone. “Façade of the Winter” is at first glance white, but a pale green seems to hover over the surface. Look close, and you’ll see dabs of green, yellow, and blue. “Maroon Hours” is a retinal knockout - nubs of yellow, orange, fuchsia, and purple generate a maroon so stoked it pops off the wall. All the pieces push you back and draw you in.
2004
In one of the oddest pairings of the season, Gallery NAGA has put up the work of the young Japanese-born painter Masako Kamiya alongside Crite’s exhibit. It makes for a delightful contrast; the two have in common a certain playfulness. Kamiya is one of those artists with a mind-numbing repetitive process, as well as a fascination with surface texture: She builds up dots of gouache, making tiny colorful spikes that rise like tiny mushrooms right off the work.
This show features works on paper. On canvas, Kamiya fills all her available space with her dots. On paper, she leaves the edges blank, and the dots often take on an organic quality, growing in color intensity of height toward the center of the work. These pieces feel less like a sculptural object and maybe more lighthearted than her paintings, and they have more flexible and surprising shapes.
“Polestar” appears to hang from its corners like a spider web, cinching in at the sides. The edges are soft, with pale blue and butter yellow dots, but the brightness builds in the center with flashes of fuchsia and goldenrod. It reads like the inhalation of a delicious scent, or the slow appreciation of a subtle flavor.
2003
...The paintings do surprise. Their texture, rough and bristling with tiny stalagmites, is rugged but enticing. The play of color over the surface, with so many layers exposed in each nub, feels infinite.
Masako Kamiya builds up her paintings dot by dot, making little stalks of colored gouache that bristle over her surface like growing mold. Yet, in their bright tones, their precision, and the sheer exuberance of their seeming growth, there’s a joy to her work.
...Kamiya has her own show at Gallery NAGA, and she merits the buzz. Call her a pointillist with depth. Working with acrylic gouache and a tiny brush, Kamiya paints small dots on her canvases. Painstakingly, she builds up each dot using different colors, creating thousands of miniature, multi-toned stalks in each painting. They hover like reeds over spare underdrawings, which map out simple circular patterns.
...The obsessive, intricate technique creates luminous fields of color that change depending on where you stand, and paintings that are truly three-dimensional.
...The tones and textures alone make her work eye candy, but it’s made with such painterly sophistication and precise technique, it’s no wonder she’s attracting attention. You don’t have to know anything about art to like these paintings, but it you know just a little, they’ll knock your socks off.
2002