» View SHIRLEY KANEDA - Soft Freeze exhibition

SHIRLEY KANEDA'S upcoming visit to Australia promises to be a fascinating experience. The most immediately striking characteristic of a painting by Shirley Kaneda is the graphic impact of the colour. The juxtapositions of purple and orange, pink, lilac or apple green and turbid yellows are a feast for the eye. The colours sometimes seem sassy but are in oil despite the muted tones that evoke pastel. Virtually all colour exists somewhere in nature but Kaneda arrives at her unique hues by computers, so her colour sense is achieved from a mental and emotional activation rather than from copying nature. Some otherworldly screen saver comes to mind. The paintings indeed derive to some degree from photoshop manipulations of scanned watercolours, and are strikingly ambiguous. The titles of works in this exhibition such as "Blissful Melancholy" or "Disciplined Chaos" bear this out. The titles are oxymoronic.

Kaneda uses one of the oldest human technologies - painting, to describe one of the newest - the computer. The internet is more and more our interface with the world and - for better or worse - even with each other. The paintings however only allude for me to our entry and exit to the computer medium. What happens inside the screens in terms of the effect cyberspace has on individuals does not concern the artist ? that is our business

There is something measured and cerebral about her work that does not allow the eye to rest. Flatness versus depth, spaces insinuated but not achieved, the feel of a bouquet of flowers versus a computer screen, biomorphic shapes reminiscent of Miro versus an abstract explosion perhaps originating in the pop art colour and imagery of James Rosenquist or Frank Stella. Given these energetic tensions, it is remarkable what an overall calming influence the paintings evoke.

Shirley Kaneda was born in Korea, raised in Japan and has spent her adult life in New York City. She is an Associate Professor at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and presumably well tuned to the currents and movements in contemporary art. She is obviously well aware of her place in the continuum of painting and the more advanced theoretical discourses, which abound in the New York art world.

The final results in the paintings are platforms for me to make of, as we will. There are few clues as to what the artist may want us to think or feel. I imagine Kaneda likes it that way. Especially in Australia, perhaps we are more familiar with an art that is more directly related to nature. Kaneda is, I imagine, resolutely urban. For her, nature is macro and biomorphic rather than grand and representative. Like a contemporary Cezanne, she uses nature as a model but employs technology to temper it and construct her container. The language is at once delicate and robust, universal and highly specific. There is a sense of exhilaration when viewing her paintings that plays to our emotions. In the end, these extraordinary and unique paintings of Shirley Kaneda make us feel good.
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