Artists

Kimoto, Keiko

The three female Buddha and the vermillion red Queen, 2021
Courtesy: Keiko Kimoto, Gabriel Rossell Santillán

Painter Keiko Kimoto masters various techniques and languages. The artist is precise and expresses simultaneous forms of beauty through technique. She cares for the viewer, makes them think, imagine, make an effort to understand her paintings.
Keiko Kimoto’s paintings distinguish themselves by still virtuosity which, at the same time, contain movement. Her technique involves quick brushes and improvisation; she masters the technique of freezing movement into painting. Keiko Kimoto represents the paradox, this means that she represents images of static movement. For the tapestry Flowers beneath our feet, which Keiko Kimoto painted together with Gabriel Rossell Santillán, there was no planning. The dialogue between the artists took place via improvisation: colors, buckets, different kinds of brushes were employed for
this intercultural exchange between Japan and Mexico. Different geographies and narrations came together, instantly. The most important detail of this work - made in a profound dialogue - is that
both artists finished each other’s images. After each one had started the images in the tapestry, they interchanged, thus finishing what the other had envisioned. According to Gabriel Rossell Santillán, this process is not usual. In his words, “no painter lets another painter finish their image.” This type of creation represents one of the deepest forms of communication: a perfect dialogue in synchronization which also ended in a mirror effect. The
tapestry, the aquarel, shows female images of spirituality of both geographies. The finished piece is the representation of an intercultural and interreligious dialogue which re-members a Moghul tapestry of the sixteenth century. This collaborative work is about a remembrance in creativity, thus opening and imagining a tapestry whose pieces have been lost and scattered. It shows the way in which dialogues and connections can be made through the metaphor of the Pacific – which can go back in time (to the sixteenth century) and exist simultaneously in the present.

Text: Andrea Meza Torres

Painter Keiko Kimoto masters various techniques and languages. The artist is precise and expresses simultaneous forms of beauty through technique. She cares for the viewer, makes them think, imagine, make an effort to understand her paintings.
Keiko Kimoto’s paintings distinguish themselves by still virtuosity which, at the same time, contain movement. Her technique involves quick brushes and improvisation; she masters the technique of freezing movement into painting. Keiko Kimoto represents the paradox, this means that she represents images of static movement. For the tapestry Flowers beneath our feet, which Keiko Kimoto painted together with Gabriel Rossell Santillán, there was no planning. The dialogue between the artists took place via improvisation: colors, buckets, different kinds of brushes were employed for
this intercultural exchange between Japan and Mexico. Different geographies and narrations came together, instantly. The most important detail of this work - made in a profound dialogue - is that
both artists finished each other’s images. After each one had started the images in the tapestry, they interchanged, thus finishing what the other had envisioned. According to Gabriel Rossell Santillán, this process is not usual. In his words, “no painter lets another painter finish their image.” This type of creation represents one of the deepest forms of communication: a perfect dialogue in synchronization which also ended in a mirror effect. The
tapestry, the aquarel, shows female images of spirituality of both geographies. The finished piece is the representation of an intercultural and interreligious dialogue which re-members a Moghul tapestry of the sixteenth century. This collaborative work is about a remembrance in creativity, thus opening and imagining a tapestry whose pieces have been lost and scattered. It shows the way in which dialogues and connections can be made through the metaphor of the Pacific – which can go back in time (to the sixteenth century) and exist simultaneously in the present.

Text: Andrea Meza Torres

The three female Buddha and the vermillion red Queen, 2021
Courtesy: Keiko Kimoto, Gabriel Rossell Santillán