Kayo aka Kushi Ui Exhibition of New Works

The November exhibit at the Amity Gallery, “Two is to Totality, Fives Two” features the work of Warwick Artist, Kishi Ui. For this show he uses his pseudonym name “Kayo” to represent his male feminist stance as the exploration of the wholeness of being from one to two as the simplicity to the complexity.

Kishi Ui, born in Japan and moved to the US in 1977 to further his study of visual arts. He had a recommendation letter from Japanese art critic, Yoshiaki Tohno who introduced him to Jasper Jones and Shusaku Araki. He frequently associated with Shusaku Araki and studied at the Art Student League with such great artists as: Richard Pousette-Dart and Michael Ponce de Leon.

Seeing some of his colleagues struggling and restricted by galleries’ demands, he made a the choice to pursue his art privately, within his own artistic challenges. He hadn’t shown his works for many years until a young gallery owner, Stephen Lipuma of Court Tree Collective Gallery in Industry City of New York, accidentally found his works and pushed him to bring them to the public (in 2017 at 68 years of age.) He had a few more shows with Lipuma, including a big solo exhibition at Court Tree’s satellite gallery in the old Chase Manhattan Building’s lobby in NYC.

Since moving to Warwick in 1994, he has expanded his works to further his theory of his philosophy with interests on the numbers and recently creating his works by using two different names: Kayo and Kishi. He uses Kishi Ui for this body of art work often applying numeric figures on the images of objects to modify his philosophical ideas.