Jonas Wood and Shio Kusaka: Blackwelder

This book was published in 2017 on the occasion of Jonas Wood and Shio Kusaka: Blackwelder at Gagosian, Hong Kong, the first exhibition of the artists’ work in the city.

Wood and Kusaka draw from each other’s work as painter and potter to probe the tensions between representation and expression, precision and chance, and influences from art history and from life. Kusaka’s porcelain vessels play muse to Wood’s drawn and painted interiors, while conversely their idiosyncratic forms and glazes owe something to his impulsive line. The artists draw from personal memory and their shared existence as a married couple, his half-objective, half-fictional Los Angeles landscapes and still lifes set in their studio on Blackwelder Street, and her painted patterns alluding to their young daughter’s fascination with dinosaurs, among other things.

The bilingual (English/Chinese) volume includes over a hundred paintings, drawings, and ceramic works by the artists, alongside photography of their shared studio and reproductions of source materials. It also features an essay by art critic Chris Wiley.