Yuko Kimura was born in Oakland, California to Japanese parents and raised in Tokyo. She returned to the United States to earn her MFA in Printmaking at the University of Michigan.
Kimura creates collages from her etchings, lithographs, and woodblock prints. Her collage process involves cutting up fragments of her prints then intuitively reorganizing them into a new image. Transparency, form and structure all take priority as Kimura constructs her two dimensional patchwork experiments.
Kimura received the Agnes Gund Award for having the most outstanding thesis exhibition at The Cleveland Institute of Art. She was recently written up in The New York Times. In the Times Art Review: "A tasty morsel of two from the smorgsbord of a big group show", New York Times Art Critic Benjamin Genochio wrote, "Large sprawling group exhibitions are like all you ca eat restaurants. There is usually too much available and none of it is very good, but occasionally you hit upon something tasty and out of the ordinary like Masha Ryskin's and Yuko Kimura's billowing fabric installation. It is raw, inventive and has trippy-qualities that seem an embodiment of the condition of contemporary art now."
Kimura's work is based on "wabi" which is the beauty to be found in spareness and simplicity. Wabi sabi is the quintessential Japanese aesthetic. It is the beauty of the things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete. Wabi sabi is the beauty of things modest and humble. It is quiet, elegant and simple.
Museum collections: Cleveland Museum of Art; Tama Art University Museum, Tokyo; Cleveland Art Association.
