Ruarts Gallery of Contemporary Art represents Kimiko Yoshida’s new series of photographs, majestic and indecipherable portraits conceived with the history of art in mind, which is entitled Paintings. Self-portraits. These works are closely associated with art history and represent a symbolic revision of the masterpieces made by Raphael, Durer, Caravaggio, Gustav Klimt and William Blake.
Influenced by these artists, her self-portraits balance between reality and illusion, contraposition and paradox, abstract and material.
All Kimiko’s works are printed on canvas which even more unites this series with the painting. Finding the inspiration in the suits and accessories haute couture by Paco Rabanne, Kimiko creates entirely new images, transforming dresses, skirts and bags into the 17th century hairdos, antique ornaments or historical costumes. The artist, who sees a figure of the infinite in monochrome, regards the self-portrait as a disappearance: totally conditioned by the experience of transformation, Kimiko’s art develops the highly contemporary stance of protest against voluntary servitude, stereotypes of ‘‘gender’’ and biological determinism of heredity. “Art is a subtle process of transposition, an assiduous struggle with the state of things. To be there where I think I am not, to disappear where I think I am, that is what matters”, Kimiko says.
