Exhibition
Kurofune: Louis Savage Solo Exhibition
18 Feb 2015 – 7 Mar 2015
Event times
Opening hours:
Tuesday – Friday 10am-6pm
Saturday 11am – 5pm
Sunday and Monday by appointment
Address
- 8 Clarendon Cross
- London
- W11 4AP
- United Kingdom
Travel Information
- Holland Park
KUROFUNE takes its name from the word meaning ‘blackships’ in Japanese – a symbol of the coming out of isolation, and the name given to Western vessels arriving in Japan in the 16th and 19th centuries.
Saoku – was the policy of isolation that Japan embarked on during this time, when no foreigner could enter and nor could any Japanese leave – or face a penalty of death, this continued for many years.
About
Within his oeuvre there are: autobiographical elements, attempts to understand the solipsism in everyday life, the understanding of the individual in relation to others and their environment, and the philosophy of language and communication.
Louis’ main desire to understand identity, perception and reality has brought him to concepts he can question in his work, he likens identity to a spiders web, whose different strands form our beliefs and understandings and are stretched out in different directions, when individual strands move or are broken the web shifts, adapting, taking on a slightly different shape and continuing to function in this new formation.
His work starts methodically, then within that framework is allowed to deviate off as discoveries are made through the process of painting, going through a multitude of different states with different real time experiences and ideas feeding into the canvas and developing over time, latticed together in a state of ordered chaos.
This choreographed disorder, and splicing of ideas within Louis’ work is what makes it so inviting. The great expanses of his pieces are all consuming. They challenge you to decipher them, yet like a visual “Wittgenstein ladder” at the same time make the viewer accessible to themselves, giving a starting point and leaving it open to interpretation, giving you the steps for the climb upward within yourself.
His conceptual standpoint is that the painting once completed is a fixed piece, it cannot change. But, you as a viewer can and will, so each reading of his paintings will change over time, what you gain will be dependent of many internal and external variables, making you, the individual as much part of the work as he the painter.
