Etsu Egami - by Beate Scheder & Martin Herb (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

What is worth talking about in art eludes language. Aesthetic experience is without words, like a human encounter that touches upon our innermost being. Etsu Egami is interested in the margins of understanding, where the communication of ideas and feelings threatens to fail, where forms become illegible. That is the point on which she homes in with her brush, which she wields in a rough calligraphic style, putting almost translucent oil paints on the canvas. Spectral faces emerge that dissolve into abstraction; abstract forms, beheld from the corner of one's eye, momentarily coalesce into a likeness. Painting, to Egami, is a physical and performative act, the brush an extension of her arm, bringing a picture into being in sweeping rhythmical motions. As we contemplate her work, that momentum imparts itself to us: first our eyes begin to wander, then we feel our bodies stir, and finally the spirit, too, pulsates in the rhythm of the brush. Gathering Egami's most outstanding works, this catalogue is a universal invitation to join a peculiar dance, an arc of light the artist traces across all barriers to understanding and that speaks to our senses.

About the Author

As a freelance journalist she writes for taz.die tageszeitung - Kultur and Berlin-Kultur, Monopol, Tagesspiegel, WELT / WELT am Sonntag - Kunstmarkt, King Kong Magazine, GEO Special and ZEITmagazin Online; as a freelance author I write gallery and catalog texts as well as book contributions. At the Goldrausch Kü nstlerinnenprojekt she gives media and interview training in workshops and individual coaching sessions. She also moderates discussion panels, proofread and edit texts and have experience in corporate publishing and content creation. Martin Herb is the president of Swiss-Japanese Chamber of Commerce.