Untitled 1988

This untitled work was made by Aki Kuroda. The bold, graphic quality of this piece, with its flat planes of color, reminds us that art-making is, at its core, a process of layering and decision-making. Look at the way Kuroda uses texture and color. The paint is applied in a way that feels both deliberate and spontaneous. Notice the interplay between the red, green, and black shapes, and how they create a sense of depth and movement. There are also these scribbled black lines dancing across the surface, they look like an afterthought, or perhaps the key to the whole thing. The way the colors abut each other, creating hard edges, has this raw, almost brutal quality which reminds me of Guston, though Kuroda has his own thing going on. It's this ongoing exchange of ideas that makes art so endlessly fascinating, isn’t it?