In the discourse on solids in the arts, we have a splendid demonstration of elegance, grace, and nature in the works of Ms. Rakuko Naito @ Shoshana Wayne Gallery. Juxtaposed to her ensemble of cosmically-woven textured papers, Mr. Tadaaki Kuwayama has positioned his artwork toward a serious meditation on the idea of space. The totality of the exhibition gives us a clearer idea of order within the wisdom of the Tao Te Jing: know the masculine, maintain the feminine.

TK454-3/4-22, 2022
Acrylic on canvas
54 3/4” x 54 3/4” each

With respect to this, Kuwayama-san provides us with a stern obsessiveness towards, not so much capturing, as completing, the visual space of his artistic ideas. In the inclusion of such efforts at exactness, we have a grander appearance of regularity to be necessarily related to order; one of control but not one of dominant possession. It is in this marksmanship of perfection which we can begin to understand the goodness of man’s capability of imposing order to impose balance into his mental life. This is the affirmation of health.

TK3454-3/4-21, 2021
Acrylic on canvas
54 3/4” x 54 3/4” each. Courtesy of the artist Tadaaki Kuwayama and Shoshana Wayne Gallery.

TK576-1/4-22, 2022
Acrylic on canvas
76 1/4” x 15 1/4”. Courtesy of the artist Tadaaki Kuwayama and Shoshana Wayne Gallery.

Untitled (Soft edge rolls), 2020
Paper
30” x 30” x 3 1/2”. Courtesy of the artist Tadaaki Kuwayama and Shoshana Wayne Gallery.

And yet, while imposing such a staunch meditation of human completeness, we have the impossible reach realized with the idea of perfection always needing to be balanced by an outside force; a higher power; one which embraces the milky invisible cosmic flow of The Way, and its ever-present infinitude impossible to ever-reach now. It is here where we can appropriately balance the awe in being able to construct with the pleasure in the ability to form as separate acts of creation with Kuwayama-san’s wife Rakuko Niato.

Untitled (Burnt edge swirl) (detail), 2020 Paper 36” x 36” x 3 1/2”. Courtesy of the artist Rakuko Niato and Shoshana Wayne Gallery.

Untitled (Cotton ball), 2016 Paper 36” x 36” x 3 1/2”. Courtesy of the artist Rakuko Niato and Shoshana Wayne Gallery.

Her paper and organic media plasticity, appearing in such gently modest compositions of 20″ to 36″ and in such spontaneous variety, is a genuinely eclectically delightful garden grove for the mind’s eye in perceiving a higher understanding of delicate; indeed, a truer one. One of a beautifully gentle reminder of the permanently ungraspable form of the Universe’s Path, and how imperceptible it is to so many humans in the way it moves what is now appearing before us consciously. This idea of order, of balance, of harmony, must be of a higher truth; it must imitate the First Artist, The Father of Truth and Its Holy Wonder, the most. For this is how our body’s natural design merits the brilliant complexity of visible universe. This is beauty.

For more details please contact the gallery:

Shoshana Wayne Gallery

5247 W. Adams Blvd.

Los Angeles, CA 90016

P: 323.452.9067

mail@shoshanawayne.com