SANTA MONICA, CA.- William Turner Gallery presents Hand in Hand, an exhibition of new sculpture by Koji Takei.

In Hand in Hand, Takei reworks mostly found objects to provide an engagingly wry and witty commentary on the nature of relationships – complete with their humor, contradictions, paradoxes and ironies. Often re-forming the objects with a tongue-in-cheek subversion of their function, the sculptures become playful metaphors for the artist’s views on the nature of the objects and the relationships they may symbolize.

The elegance and attention to craft that characterize the sculptures draw clearly from the artist’s Japanese heritage and cultural sensibilities, but the humor and re-purposing of found objects are a pure strain of southern California’s assemblage tradition.

Born in Tokyo in 1955 Koji Takei lives and works in Los Angeles, California. He has taught at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, CA, Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, and is currently a faculty member at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena and Academy of Art University in San Francisco. His art has been the subject of recent exhibitions at Laguna Art Museum in Laguna Beach and the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles. This is Takei’s fourth solo show at William Turner Gallery.

William Turner Gallery is also presenting Diochroma, an exhibition of new paintings by Rex Yuasa.

In Diochroma, Yuasa integrates a charged palette and differing surface finishes to create complex compositional structures. The artist’s work is infused with an east-west sensibility that perfectly suits his abstract compositions. Utilizing Raku-like glazes to create veils of color, Yuasa references his Japanese heritage and cultural influences. Yet the paintings also speak in the unique vernacular of southern California painting – one thinks of “Finish Fetish” - with their lustrous surfaces and sensual textures.

The artist relinquishes narrative content to explore delicate interplays between color, texture and dimension. Repetitive spheres and pearlescent paints are employed to produce rich variations of sheen and transparency, volume and space. Perception of an elusive, subtle beauty is the viewer’s reward.

Born in Tokyo, Yuasa received his B.F.A. in 1990 at San Diego State University, and his M.F.A. at California Institute of the Arts in 1992. He has exhibited in museums and galleries in both the United States and Japan, and his work is in numerous public and private collections including the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Japan; the Nerima City Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan; and the Tochigi Prefectural Museum of Fine Arts, Tochigi, Japan. The artist currently lives in San Diego and teaches painting at the University of California, San Diego.