kaori homma

"Kaori Homma's art contains a wide range of traditions,practices, and ideas inherent in the art history of both East and West. Made by hand, and cast in paper, many of her works owe an obvious debt to the traditional Japanese craft of paper making, but at the same time are keenly attentive to many of the icons and movements within the mainstream of traditional and contemporary Western art. The richness of these contrasting currents are pared down to an art that is immediate, and as visually engaging as it is provocative."

Press release from Aughinbaugh Art Gallery 2001

"Integrity of casting - what Susan Sontag has called material photography - ensures, however, that a soul still haunts the work." Steven Adams writes, "the understatement and craft in these work is at odds with the Western current of conceptualism that Homma so knowingly acknowledges. Infact, critics writing about Homma's work have often pointed out that commonplace objects deemed of little significance in the West are often subject to aesthetic and even spiritual appreciation in the East. But the kind of critical appraisal that attend so much art, the notion that access to a theory or a historical narrative will somehow make the work speak more lucidly seems ham-fisted in Homma's case. The exhibition operates, it seems, on an altogether different level, a level akin to that referred to by Marcel Proust who found that water dropped onto a manuscript dissolved the ink and had the momentary capacity to bring its late- author back to life. For Proust, the material proximity of the ink to the person gave the mark a unique capacity to speak. The unique capacity of Homma's work perhaps resides in a similar capacity not so much to speak but to whisper in a muted, delicate but resolutely distinctive voice."

Steven Adams, Introduction for the Exhibition catalogue 'Kaori Homma' Copy right University of Hertfordshire ,1997 , ISBN 18985 43 283