Gallery Kiyooka Sumiko 1998 -

Tokyo Art Observer , Issue 44 (Winter 1999 – Rediscovered Draft)

The Whisper of Folding Time: Revisiting Kiyooka Sumiko’s 1998 Tokyo Retrospective Gallery Kiyooka Sumiko 1998

Sumiko abandoned her earlier, celebrated nihonga florals. Instead, she presented the “Folding Series” — large sheets of handmade kōzo paper, folded thousands of times into geometric origami cranes, then unfolded and mounted. The creases trapped 1998’s particulates: dust from a pachinko parlor, ash from a student’s burned résumé, even a single dried konbu strand from her mother’s obentō . Tokyo Art Observer , Issue 44 (Winter 1999

Not a comfortable exhibition. Not a beautiful one. But necessary. ★★★★☆ (lost half a star only for the unforgivable lack of benches—my knees still ache.) If you’d like, I can also create a fictional artist biography for Kiyooka Sumiko, or describe the actual works in the “Folding Series” as if for a museum catalog. Not a comfortable exhibition