Koll’s View of Tokyo
Hillside Terrace Annex A will welcome sculptor Tycho Koll for his first exhibition in his native Tokyo.
Koll developed his expertise for resin through working in the LA studio of Austrian-American artist Johannes Girardoni. Constructed from several layers of epoxy resin poured onto canvas, Koll’s deceptively flat paintings are experiments in compositional depth. The Berlin-based artist builds his multilayered compositions from materials ranging from paint, pigment and markers to custom vinyl stickers and found objects.
For this exhibition, Koll presents a new series of works as offerings to the city he grew up in. Some of the figures depicted in these paintings reference iconic Edo-period renditions of yōkai, while others draw from contemporary depictions of monsters and fantastical creatures in manga, anime and cartoons. Various patterns and abstract compositions appear across the paintings — among them clusters of ovals, diamonds and kanji that evoke early-2000s computer graphics.
