CARRIE YAMAOKA

In her book Megalopolis, Celeste Olalquiaga describes the contemporary city as having a "hologramlike aesthetic," where "buildings are seen to disappear behind reflections of the sky or merge into one another." This endless series of reflections on the one hand encourages a sense of limitless space, but any sense of physical freedom this may foster, argues Olalquiaga, is "soon lost to the reproduction ad infinitum of space - a hall of mirrors in which passersby are dizzied into total oblivion."

She relates this experience to the condition of psychaesthenia, defined as a state in which the relation between self and surrounding territory is disturbed, where "the space defined by the coordinates of the organism's own body is confused with represented space."' Artist Carrie Yamaoka's reflective Mylar paintings implicitly restage this "warped" relationship between the body and the boundless surface of the contemporary metropolis.

Standing before these works one's body bends, swirls, and dissolves in al1 manner of hypnotizing ways. Yamaoka pours layers of translucent color and clear acrylic over sheets of Mylar; the finished painting is rubbery and lightweight, with a slick surface sheen that recalls California Finish Fetish and Light and Space art.

But unlike the products of these art movements and their machine-made aesthetic, Yamaoka's paintings retain traces of their handmade origins: tiny pinprick-sized bubbles sometimes appear on their undulating surfaces, while telltale drips of resin often mar their otherwise straight edges.

Freed from traditional supports, the paintings are as apt to curve seamlessly across a corner or slouch vertically against a wall and onto the floor as they are to hang complacently like traditional paintings do.

Yamaoka's mercurial works meld opposites; appearing both solid and liquid, reflective and refractive, they dissolve boundaries between painting and sculpture, along with those between the discrete art object and the room-sized installation.

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AEROPLASTICS CONTEMPORARY is pleased to present the first solo exhibition of work by New York artist Carrie Yamaoka with the gallery.

For the past eight years, Yamaoka has worked with reflective mylar, a plastic film coated with a reflective surface. The artist pours resin onto this reflective ground. Referring to this work as painting would be misleading; there are no painted images present. It is empty of content but full of incident. There are air bubbles and swooshes and blips which occur that are the result of process. We are faced with a bendable, pliable, inflected and obscured 'mirror' image. Sometimes the viewer is confronted with dizzying vortices of intense color. The works in this exhibition will range from small to large, taking a variety of forms and running a fine line between painting and sculpture: "koolpops" poured directly onto mylar, pieces mounted on wood panel looking like paintings, pieces encapsulated in a flexible rubber which hangs on the wall and sometimes extends down onto the floor and into the room.

In her own words: "You could say that the viewer becomes the subject. Or, that the viewer within the space in which the piece is being viewed, becomes the subject. The image arrived at, in any given moment, is contingent upon the viewer's navigation through the space that the painting occupies and reflects. The picture is not static; it's constantly shifting. The viewer makes and re-makes the picture(s) from the conditions that I've set up. I'm more interested in the way we see than in the things that are seen."

Yamaoka's work comes out of both a Minimalist and Pop lineage. In a review of her 2002 solo show at Debs & Co. in New York, Ken Johnson of The New York Times wrote: "In time-honored Modernist style (think Robert Ryman), Ms. Yamaoka also toys with the physical support, calling attention to the painting as a hand-made object. Freed of stretchers or underlying panels in most cases, the paintings have undulating surfaces on which you find yourself reflected as in funhouse mirrors. Some have edges fringed by plastic drips; some hang low and bend at the floor. It all adds up to a seductive marriage of voluptuous materialism and rigorous formalism."

Yamaoka's work was included in the recent exhibition "Mirror, Mirror" at MassMOCA in the U.S. This is her first solo exhibition in Europe. Forthcoming exhibitions include a solo exhibition at Studio 1.1 in London, and a solo exhibition at Debs & Co in New York, both in May 2004.

Education
1979	B.A., Wesleyan University, CT.
1977-78	Attended Tyler School of Art, Rome, Italy
Solo Exhibitions
2005	Portholes, Potholes and Portals, Galerie Une, Neuchatel, Switzerland
2004	world hotel, Debs & Co., NYC Studio 1.1, London, UK Aeroplastics Contemporary, Brussels, Belgium
2002	blue x clear + 12:1, Debs & Co., NYC
2000	Robeson Art Gallery, Rutgers University, Newark, NJ (t)here, Debs & Co., NYC
1997	Debs & Co., NYC
1990	Sorkin Gallery, NYC Banned, Swarthmore College, PA
1981	Bette Stoler Gallery, NYC
Selected Group Exhibitions
2006	Water, Water Everywhere, Contemporary Art Center of Virginia, VA Here We Go, Galerie Une, Neuchatel, Switzerland No Lemons, No Melon , curated by Carrie Moyer and Sheila Pepe, David Krut Projects, NYC When Artists Say We, Artists Space, NYC Out of the Blue, curated by Joy Episalla and Joy Garnett, organized by Amy Lipton, Abington Art Center, PA Blessed are the Merciful, curated by Jerome Jacobs, Feigen Contemporary, NYC
2005	Sleigh, curated by Studio 1.1, Arts and Business, London, UK The Obligation to Endure; Art and Ecology Since 'Silent Spring,' curated by Nick Debs, New York Academy of Sciences Petits Formats/ Small Formats, Galerie Quang, Paris, France Shining Stars under Shining Sun, Galerie Une, Neuchatel, Switzerland Water, Water Everywhere, curated by Marilu Knode, Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Scottsdale, AZ Extreme Abstraction, curated by Claire Schneider & Louis Grachos , Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY Vanishing Point, curated by Claudine Ise, The Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH Surfaces Paradise, curated by Rafael von Uslar, Museum of Modern Art, Arnhem, Holland
2004	Live forever, or die trying (manic abstract painting now), Torch Gallery, Amsterdam Pulse of America, Aeroplastics Contemporary, Brussels, Belgium
2003	Without Fear or Reproach, curated by Jerome Jacobs, Witte Zaal, Ghent, Belgium The Alumni Show, curated by Nina Felshin, Wesleyan University, CT
2002	Mirror Mirror, curated by Jane Simon, MassMOCA, North Adams, MA Painting as Paradox, curated by Lauri Firstenberg, Artists Space, NYC Portrait Obscured, San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, CA
2001	Psychedelia, Aeroplastics Contemporary, Brussels, Belgium Sheroes, Clairefontaine Gallery, Luxembourg Ignoring Boundaries: Image in the Landscape, The Fields Sculpture Park, Ghent, NY
2000	Snapshot, The Contemporary Museum, Baltimore, MD Other Worlds, curated by Erika Belle, 28 Wooster Street, NYC
1999	Distilled Life, curated by Medrie MacPhee, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY Stars of Track and Field, Debs & Co., NYC Acrylic/Plastic, Trans Hudson Gallery, NYC Unbehagen der Geschlechter/Gender Trouble, curated by Lutz Heiber and Gisela Theising, Neuer Aachener Kunstverein, Aachen, Germany
1998	Bob and Wheel, dfn Gallery, NYC Skin Deep, curated by Stefanie Nagorka, 123 Watts Gallery, NYC The Erotics of Denial, curated by Bill Arning, E.S. Vandam, NYC
1997	Material Girls: Gender, Process and Abstract Art Since 1970, curated by Harmony Hammond, Gallery 128, NYC Very Large Array, Debs & Co., NYC Silence = Death, curated by Lutz Heiber and Gisela Theising, Kunsthalle Dominikanerkirche, Osnabrück, Germany
1996	Geopony, Adam Gallery, London Graphic Responses to AIDS, Victoria & Albert Museum, London
1995	Interference, London Artforms, London Other Rooms, Four Walls at Ronald Feldman Gallery, NYC
1993	New Jersey Arts Annual, Newark Museum, NJ Contacts/Proofs, Jersey City Museum, NJ
1991	Outrageous Desire, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ Situation, curated by Nayland Blake and Pam Gregg, New Langton Arts, San Francisco Hot Off the Press, Zimmerli Museum, New Brunswick, NJ Marginal Majority, Aaron Davis Hall, CUNY, NYC Printmaking Fellowships Exhibition, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ
1990	Use: Anatoly Pronin, William Rodwell, Carrie Yamaoka, Jersey City Museum, NJ Word as Image, Proctor Art Center, Bard College, NY Queer, Wessel O'Connor Gallery, NYC A Force of Repetition, curated by Alison Weld, New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, Body. Once Removed, Sorkin Gallery, NYC
1989	Surfaces, Henry Feiwel, NYC Indicators: The Word as Image, Coup de Grace Gallery, Hoboken, NJ
1988	Wedding Pictures, Four Walls at White Columns, NYC Hudson County Artists, Jersey City Museum, NJ Four Painters, Coup de Grace Gallery, Hoboken, NJ Double Vision, curated by Fred Wilson, Hallwalls, Buffalo, NY & Longwood Arts Project, Bronx, NY Yesterday, Asian American Arts Centre, NYC
1987	The Last Supper, Ludlow Graphic Arts, NYC Ten Chinatown, Asian American Arts Centre, NYC
1985	Christopher Engel, Joy Episalla, Carrie Yamaoka, Four Walls, Hoboken, NJ
1983	Seven Painters, Ramapo College, NJ
1981	Rutgers National Drawing Show, Rutgers University, Camden, NJ
1980	Group Exhibition, Bette Stoler Gallery, NYC
Grants & Fellowships
2006	Fenenin El-Rahhal/Nomadic Artists, Working Artists' Summit, Egypt
1998	Residency at Braziers International Artists Workshop, Oxfordshire,UK
1995	Residency at Braziers International Artists Workshop, Oxfordshire, UK
1990	Printmaking Fellowship, Rutgers Center for Innovative Printmaking, Rutgers University, NJ
1988	ArtMatters Inc., NYC
1986	Two-month residency at Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, NY
Reviews & Publications
2006	Johnson, Ken; 'Blessed Are the Merciful', The New York Times, April 14, p.32
2005	Hirsch, Faye; 'Abstract Generations', Art in America, October, p.191 Johnson, Ken: 'Everywhere's the Same: Nowhere in Particular', The New York Times, June 3, p. 34 Foster, Hal: 'Six Notes on Vanishing', Vanishing Point, (exhibition catalogue), publ. by Wexner Center for the Arts, Ohio State University, p. 27 Isé, Claudine: Vanishing Point, (exhibition catalogue), publ. by Wexner Center for the Arts, Ohio State University, pg. 48-49, illus.
2004	Smith, Roberta; 'Carrie Yamaoka , World Hotel', The New York Times; June 25, p. E33 Levin, Kim; 'Pick: Carrie Yamaoka', Voice Choices, Village Voice; June 2-8
2003	Boyce, Roger ; 'Neither Here Nor There: Mirror Mirror at Mass MoCA', ART New England, Feb/March 2003
2002	The New Yorker, 'Carrie Yamaoka', Art/Galleries-Chelsea, June 17 & 24, p.30 Johnson, Ken; 'Carrie Yamaoka', The New York Times; May 24, p. B37 Mahoney, Robert; 'Carrie Yamaoka', Time Out/New York, issue 347, May 23-30, p.75, illus. Baum, Rachel; Painting as Paradox; exhibition catalog, publ. by Artists Space, p.2, p.12, illus.
2000	Leffingwell Edward ; 'Carrie Yamaoka at Debs & Co.', Art in America, July 2000, p.111, illus (t)here; exhibition catalogue with an essay by Bill Arning, 'At the Threshold of the Picture', publ. by Debs & Co, NYC, Anton, Saul; www.newyork.citysearch.com, illus. Hammond, Harmony; Lesbian Art in America: A Contemporary History; Rizzoli International Publications, illus.
1999	The World, 'Carrie Yamaoka', issue #55; published by The Poetry Project, NYC, pp. 47-55, cover, illus.
1998	Skin Deep; exhibition catalogue publ. by 123 Watts Gallery, NYC, illus. Arning, Bill; 'Editor's Choice: Carrie Yamaoka', Bomb, Spring 1998, issue no. 63, illus. Arning, Bill; 'Carrie Yamaoka', Time Out/New York, January 15-22, Issue no.121, illus. Grimm, Jay; "Three Shows in Chelsea", Critical Review, http://www.creview.com/review.cfm?id=890
1997	Carrie Yamaoka, published by Debs & Co., NYC, illus.
1996	Gray, Nicola; 'Interference', Third Text, Number 34, Spring, London Women's Art Magazine, 'Interference', January-February, London
1995	Smyth, Cherry; 'Interference', Time Out/ London, November 15-22
1990	Westfall, Stephen; Art in America, September, illus. Cyphers, Peggy; Arts, April, illus. Cover; March, NYC
Public Collections
The Victoria & Albert Museum, London The Mori Art Museum, Tokyo The Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY . member of fierce pussy public art collective, 1991-95

The New York Times  June 25, 2004.

World Hotel
Debs & Co. 525 West 26th Street, Chelsea

Carrie Yamaoka's show, her forth solo with this gallery, forms an unusually beautiful farewell for the Debs & Company partnership, which is closing its public space. Ms. Yamaoka's sumptuous yet unassuming paintings constitute a kind of Situationist Minimalism. They are physically specific and implacable, yet so vague they can almost disappear, especially if you become involved with the blurry ways they reflect their surroundings.
The mirrored surfaces of these works, which are usually made of resin on wood, range from nearly machine-made perfection to the random, bubbly roughness of fired glaze; from small to rather large; from silver to deep blue or green. Some hang on the wall like paintings; others are tucked in corners or on the floor. No two are alike. None are exactly as simple or as uniform as you first assume.
Like Robert Ryman's work, Ms. Yamaoka's is a reverent dissection of the modernist monochrome, but she also partakes of a more parodistic approach, exemplified by Robert Rauschenberg's ''White Paintings'' from the early 1950's, in which the viewer's shadow becomes part of the work. Yet its seeming embrace of accident can be connected to the much older tradition of Japanese ceramics. However you parse them, her efforts intimate a rejuvenation of Minimalism, spurred by new materials, more refined techniques and fresh ideas.



Time Out New York  Issue 347: May 23-30, 2002

blue x clear + 2:1
Debs & Co. 525 West 26th Street, Chelsea

In an increasingly relativistic world, it only makes sense that more and more artists are using or referring to reflective surfaces that warp and bend images. James Rosenquist recently painted forms as they appeared on mirrored cones; Steve Mumford made a series of landscape paintings reflected off the body of a car. Now, Carrie Yamaoka has made small works, in a series called "Kool-Pop," that consist of rippling Mylar sheets in various colors mounted onto panels with resin.
Since these pieces are diminutive and seemingly half-baked, the fun-house whirl that one might anticipate when looking into Yamaoka's panels never materializes. In some instances, a viewer's belly might dance or, say, morph into a giraffe; and the variations in color create different moods. But Yamaoka, it seems, has bigger fish to fry than simply entertaining one's inner child. Rather than create a spectacle, her low-tech materials appear to deflect or defer the idea of visual representation. She seems to be asking, Why bother to depict anything at all? It's a cool-handed approach that recalls machine-artist Andy Warhol's Mylar balloons. Yet Yamaoka's sangfroid runs even deeper and is almost ice-cold in its psychology; the "Kool" in the series title has associations with Kool-Aid, summoning to mind a cheap sugar rush or bright colors or drugs.
On the other hand, many of the panels seem situated in the gallery to extend the space visually. Such positioning imparts a certain Donald Judd­like obdurateness to them. In fact, one piece titled Corner is blunt enough to suggest that Yamaoka is more interested in elaborating upon the concrete world than in opening a window to another realm. One can't help wondering whether the works are Pop or Minimalist, site-specific or toss-away. This uncertainty is the pleasant twist in Yamaoka's strange little reflections on reality.



The New York Times - ART IN REVIEW  May 24, 2002.

Debs & Co. 525 West 26th Street, Chelsea

Beauty never did become the big issue that the critic Dave Hickey, a decade ago, so eloquently predicted it would. Yet the pursuit of beauty remains an urgent motivation for many artists -- Carrie Yamaoka, for one. The beauty in Ms. Yamaoka's medium-to-small-size paintings is of a purely sensual sort that calls to mind California Fetish Finish, but without the look of machine-made perfection. Layering poured coats of translucent color and clear acrylic over silvery Mylar, she creates glossy surfaces resembling those of lovingly lacquered custom cars. Some have the saturated color of rock candy; some are in acidic yellowish greens; some are almost completely clear.
In time-honored Modernist style (think Robert Ryman), Ms. Yamaoka also toys with the physical support, calling attention to the painting as a hand-made object. Freed of stretchers or underlying panels in most cases, the paintings have undulating surfaces on which you find yourself reflected as in fun-house mirrors. Some have edges fringed by plastic drips; some hang low and bend at the floor. It all adds up to a seductive marriage of voluptuous materialism and rigorous formalism.

Art in America  July 2000.

Debs & Co. 525 West 26th Street, Chelsea

Carrie Yamaoka's glazed slabs of deliberately imperfect luster appeared to break free from the neutral context of gallery walls, animated by the viewer's gaze and reflected presence. Occasionally tinted, they are composed of Mylar sheets applied to wood and fixed with a relatively deep surface of poured epoxy resin. As objects they are further activated by a random agitation set just beneath the resin, an effect of air pockets caught between Mylar and wood at the time of glazing. This pleasing deformation allows them to assert individual claims to unique identity.
Yamaoka's radical paintings maintain a position among those rather racy art objects that mediate between painting and sculpture. They superficially resemble John McCracken's ideal, unsullied abstractions of polished steel or polyester resin on wood, but with a reflective surface more found than sought, a consequence of their support rather than a long labor process. The sheen is not dependent on how the material is worked up or burnished, although the works do in various ways reveal the presence of the artist's hand. Yamaoka is more engaged with size and color, what the viewer imagines to be the control of the pour, and the incidental effects of their making--the controlled arbitrariness of induced defects. But the artist has other things in mind.
A handsome brochure with photographs by Yamaoka produced for this exhibition seemed to indicate how she would like these objects to be viewed. Taken in a studio context, the photos contain more information than the pristine condition of a gallery permits. The photographs, not the objects or installation, are the intended achievable ideal. Beautiful in themselves, the images look like dreamy Richter paintings, or ceramic tiles, or deliberate representations composed of reflected objects, including other paintings or gilded screens. They recall the idealized image on a food package that attempts to portray a desirable--and attainable--consuming experience.
In the rear gallery shuttered with white blinds, the intense violet-blue of an impossibly clear late January afternoon framed the edges of the windows, incandescent with a Chelsea slice of reflected Hudson River sky at sundown. This perfect light, equal to the challenge of Yamaoka's photographs, was reflected in the paintings nearest to hand and quietly resonated on from there, instilling the gallery with a fleeting warm blue glow in which these works seemed right at home.



Time Out New York  Issue No. 121: January 15-22, 1998.

Debs & Co. 525 West 26th Street, Chelsea

Carrie Yamaoka makes paintings that are essentially mirrors. Her process is simple enough: She coats Mylar sheets with layers of resin. The Mylar is reflective and provides some color, while the resin occludes the surface just enough to make things visually interesting.
On paper, this should all sound very familiar: The mirror as art is hardly news. In the '60s, Michelangelo Pistoletto made mirror pieces, and Lucas Samaras mirrored whole rooms. Warhol employed the blank, all-encompassing quality of silver Mylar to great effect. And high-gloss resin finishes have been the seductive staple of L.A. artist John McCracken for a couple of decades now. In recent years, Andrea Rosen and Tom Jones have curated strong shows of younger artists using the mirror motif. So why is Yamaoka's installation so stunningly fresh?
Yamaoka works in a few different formats, which correspond roughly to head, body and standard painting sizes. She's installed her pieces in quirky combinations that enliven Debs and Co's choppy architecture, the distortion effects stopping just short of fun-house frivolity.
In Big Bubbly, a blurry surface is regularly interrupted by blisters in the Mylar. In each bubble, your image snaps back into crisp focus, and bug-eyed versions of your face are multiplied dozens of times over. In another work, gentle veils of smoky resin allow you to see yourself as if you were about to surface from a clear, dark lake.
Admittedly, some viewers will swing quickly through the show, stopping only to fix their hair or cruise the stranger behind them; they'll see no difference between Yamaoka's restrained art and the thing hanging in the bathroom. Other gallerygoers won't be able to think about anything but how the lines around their eyes reflect their hard lives.
What I find most compelling, though, is that the image in the mirror is always determined by someone other than the artist; Yamaoka, in effect, has given up control of her work. Yet somehow she still winds up inscribing herself upon the whole parade of random events forever reflected in these vessels.