PRESS RELEASE

Kumie Tsuda’s drawings and sculptures depict figures that seem anxious or fearful that their meager physicality may be invisible to others.  Their disquiet is revealed through expressive gestures and body language. Faces may be hidden under paper bags or a sheet; bodily details are obscured in baggy neutral clothing, and all gestures seem to implore aid or beg recognition from unseen “others”. When Kumie moved to Los Angeles from Japan, her lack of English and driving skills isolated her and necessitated her walking everywhere.  Sketch for Getting Used to New Things chronicles Tsuda’s overcoming her outsider status through her figures but also through her large ceramic sculpture depicting a topographical recreation of her new Echo Park neighborhood. Regaining control of the unknown through one’s work is wonderfully therapeutic.  Her photographs, too, capture and identify small isolated bits of nature, like a single stone or curious seed pod, reframing the details of her new neighborhood and the landscape she passed during her daily solitary perambulations. 

Kumie Tsuda was born in Japan and studied at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music for her BFA and MA.  Her work has been primarily shown in Japan and this will be her first solo show in the United States.