Kouichi Tabata’s first UK solo show explores drawing beyond line- and mark-making, tending towards the painterly. His paintings of still-life subjects are sequenced into animations as a kind of ‘still footage’, leading to an exploration of the dimensions between different layers of meaning, in which these opposing forces operate. Looped paintings relinquish tranquil scenery, instead enveloping the audience into a restless, endless cycle.

His monochromatic drawings in 72 colour (Birds) present a constant renegotiation of this condition. Rendering the subject through a spectrum of coloured graphite, each frame takes on its own textural quality. Black is the reference point – other colours require details to be added or subtracted. The act of repeated drawing represents an ongoing enquiry between observation and materials. Sequencing into film reveals the nuanced variations of the process – a narrative of connected spaces between the physical phenomena and their representation on paper.

Kouichi Tabata (b.1979, Tochigi, Japan) lives and works in Berlin. He received a BA in Intermedia Art and an MA in Oil Painting from Tokyo University of the Arts. Tabata has received numerous grants and awards, including an Overseas Research grant from the Yoshino Gypsum Art Foundation (2011), a grant for Overseas Study from the Pola Art Foundation (2012), and an Arts and Culture grant from the Nomura Foundation (2014).

Tabata has exhibited in Japan and internationally. Notable solo exhibitions include interior /pare/ exterior, Joyce Gallery, Beijing (2013); interior /pare/ exterior, G-tokyo 2013, Tokyo Midtown Hall (2013); and trace of images, Gallery Koyanagi, Tokyo (2011). His recent group exhibitions include Drawing Biennale at Drawing Room, London (2015); Temporal Measures at White Rainbow, London (2014); Arafudo Art Annual 2014, Fukushima City Minkaen, Fukushima (2014); Chronicle 1995, Twentieth Anniversary Special MOT Collection, Tokyo (2014); THE ECHO – SPREADING OF LIGHT, Japanisches Kulturinstitut Köln, Cologne (2013); and one build one gild, CAPSULE, Tokyo (2013). Tabata’s work is held in the collections of the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, and the Toyota Art Collection in Aichi.