EXHIBITION
Satoru Abe: 100 New Paintings
August 20 – December 8, 2024
The Art Gallery, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa (UHM), Art Building
The Art Gallery at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa is proud to present Satoru Abe: 100 New Paintings.
I wanted to paint something that I had never painted before. With no preconceived concepts, sketches, or notions in mind, I started my first blank canvas with just a palette of oil paints.
After I finished 75 paintings, I came to the startling realization that my paintings could be viewed 4 different ways: right side up, upside down, or rotated 90 degrees. To enhance and energize a painting, it could be hung singularly, in a pair, or in a triptych. This would increase the number of ways a painting could be displayed. This is an approach that has challenged me, and it will surely invite interpretive participation from the people who view these paintings.
This approach has never been done before and I hope it will broaden your appreciation for art. Art is exciting and it can be appreciated from many angles and points of view. How we view things is how we live. Discoveries are still to be found after 97 years!
–Satoru Abe, May, 2024
Satoru Abe (b. 1926) is one of the most significant artists in the history of Hawai‘i. In his 90s, he has been remarkably prolific and exploratory, producing 318 paintings since 2019. Satoru Abe: 100 New Paintings features 100 of these dynamic new works. The paintings demonstrate Abe’s on-going commitment to abstraction, and the unique sense of form that can be seen in his sculpture. Lyric colors and poetic forms are inspired by the natural world. He combines gestural abstraction with hard-edged boundaries, creating dynamic surface tension and depth. While his language of abstract themes creates a formal continuity, each piece is original and unique.
Saturo Abe was born in Honolulu, Hawai‘i to Kuhachi and Toyo Abe as one of five children (three brothers and two sisters). He attended McKinley High School, and in 1948, he spent the summer at California Academy of Fine Arts, then moved to New York to attend the Art Students League. In 1949, he met and eventually married fellow Art Students League student Ruth Tanji of Wahiawa. In 1950, he returned to Honolulu, where his daughter Gail was born. At that time, he met his mentor, Isami Doi, and fellow artists Bumpei Akaji, Robert Ochikubo, Jerry Okimoto, and Tadashi Sato. The group began to exhibit at Gima’s Art Gallery. In 1951, he learned welding with Akaji, created his first sculpture and participated in a 3-person exhibition at The Honolulu Academy of Art. From 1953 to 1955, he developed his first body of work (the “white paintings”), and continued to exhibit at Gima’s and Metcalf Chateau. In 1956, he returned to New York City and began a long-term association with Sculpture Center, Long Island, NY where he was invited to hold solo exhibitions in 1958, 1961, 1965, and 1968. Abe was selected for the New Talent exhibition by Art in America (1959), received a grant from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation (1963), and received an NEA grant for Artist-in-Residence in Waianae, Hawai‘i (1971). After his solo exhibition at The Contemporary Arts Center, Honolulu (1971), he moved back to Hawai‘i. He continued to have numerous exhibitions and receive many awards, notably a solo retrospective at the Contemporary Arts Center, Honolulu (1982), a retrospective at the Tokyo Central Museum (1986), a 50 year retrospective at the Contemporary Museum, Honolulu (1998), and a solo exhibition at Honolulu Museum at First Hawaiian Center (2022).
–Debra Drexler, Curator, Acting Director of the Museum and Galleries
Organization
Special thanks to Gail Goto for her design and curatorial ideas, organizational expertise, tireless energy, and humor. Thank you to the Honolulu Museum of Art staff Tyler Cann, Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Katherine Love, Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art, Alejandra Rojas Silva, Works on Paper, Photography and New Media Fellow, and Amy Endres, Public Programs Manager for their collaboration. Thanks to the staff of the University Galleries and the John Young Museum of Art, Sheika Alghezawi, Assistant Director, David Kiyabu, Gallery Exhibition Coordinator, Mia Zheng, Curatorial Graduate Assistant, Hala Megahy, Installation Graduate Assistant, Celia Langford, Joyce Okano, Olivia Ambo, and the staff at the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.
Opening Reception
Date: September 1, 2024, 2:00-4:00 pm
Location: Art Building
Sponsors
The Art Gallery is supported by the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa’s Department of Art + Art History and College of Arts, Languages & Letters; the Office of Student Equity, Excellence and Diversity, SEED IDEAS Grant for their support of the exhibition, and the Admiral Residency in Contemporary Pacific Art for support of teaching residencies to accompany the exhibition. The Halekulani Hotel– Hospitality Sponsor for the Arts at UH Mānoa, the Cooke Foundation, the Beverly Willis Foundation, and the Michael J. Marks Foundation.
THE ART GALLERY is located at 2535 McCarthy Mall, Rm 141, Honolulu, HI 96822.
Gallery hours and admission
Tuesday – Friday & Sunday 12 – 4 p.m.
Closed Saturdays, Mondays, spring break (March 17-22), and state holidays.
Free admission. Donations are appreciated.
Parking fees may apply during weekdays. Parking is free on Sundays
For more information please contact Sheika Alghezawi at 808.956.8364 and gallery@hawaii.edu