Opening Saturday, March 24th, Wako Works of Art is pleased to present a solo exhibition of work by Swiss artist Miriam Cahn. This will be the artist's first solo exhibition in Japan. On exhibit will be meine juden (My Jews), which the installation space itself with hung paintings is presented as a large single work, and Cahn's recent paintings and drawings. A catalogue will be published in conjunction to this exhibition.

Influenced by the Happening and the feminist movements to which she was exposed in the 1970s, Cahn began with performances and drawings, and she traversed into other forms of media such as photography and painting. For each and every exhibition, Cahn carefully considers the characteristics of the space provided, thus allowing for various interceptions to take place and create a multilayered visual experience.

Despite presenting direct approaches to specific social and political issues such as identity and war, nuclear energy and thus bearing thematic weight to her work, Cahn's extraordinary sense and use of color renders a unique world; furthermore, her layered brushstrokes and contour lines that seem to blend with the background yield a sense of abstraction to the figures and other subjects. The installation work meine juden, through the seemingly random arrangement of the colorful portraits in varying sizes, and her watercolor painting, which depicts the iconic forms of the nuclear bomb in deceivingly vibrant colors, both sound a cacophony to the paradoxes found in the world around her.

This exhibition is supported in part by the Embassy of Switzerland in Japan.

» Press Release(PDF)

Born in Switzerland in 1949, Miriam Cahn has been exhibiting since 1970. She has shown throughout Europe, and was included in Documenta 7 (1982) and was selected to represent at the Swiss Pavilion in the Venice Biennale in 1984. Her work is in the permanent collections of London's Tate, New York's Museum of Modern Art, Kunsthalle Basel and Kunstmuseum Bonn. She currently lives and works in Basel and Bergell.