HARD LINE WOMEN

Opening: Wednesday, September 16, 6- 8 p.m

Nonaka-Hill Los Angeles presents Hard Line Women, an exhibition of Japanese women artists working during the 1960s, 70s, 80s, and today. Producing works across painting, performance, sculpture, installation and photography, Sumie Aoki (1924 – 2025); Akiko Horio (1937-); Rei Kawakubo (1942 - ); Kazuko Miyamoto (1942 - ); Aiko Miyawaki (1929-2014); Rakuko Naito (1935 - ); Etsuko Nakatsuji (1937- ); Tomie Ohtake (1913-2015); Kay Sekimachi (1926 -); Atsuko Tanaka (1932-2005); Eiko Yamazawa (1899-1995); and Shizuko Yoshikawa (1934-2019) each have practiced singular versions of hard-edged abstraction.

Hard Line Women identifies a powerful language of expression, concurrent with pivotal periods in the global women’s movement. Either for their lifetime, or for a brief period, these artists chose to sculpt, paint and photograph hard edges—against masculine ideals and grandiosity — countering storm and stress with rationalism and geometry. That several of them worked as graphic designers (Yamazawa, Miyawaki, Nakatsuji, Yoshikawa) alongside or as supplements to their art careers, suggests, at least, an abiding interest in coolness and formal order, a striving towards a materialist and non-psychological reality that lives beyond the artist and artwork. They have left behind, and in some cases continue to leave, singular bodies of work defying formal and gender-based expectations. while also expanding beyond the limitations of hard edge abstraction. The breadth and depth of these women’s work reveals how they perform beyond it's strict parameters and will serve to illuminate threads in 20th century modernism while continuing the project of exhibiting the pioneering contributions of female Japanese artists.