Palingenesis

Catalog note / 解説

Kumi Korf grew up in Japan but now lives and works in the USA. She makes prints and artists’ books. In 1998 she began printing soft-ground etchings on Japanese paper, using a bookbinding tool called a bone folder to draw. Made of bone, it is pointed at one end and wide and flat at the other so that it can make a range of marks from fine lines to broad strokes. Using this technique Korf made several prints entitled ‘Palingenesis’ (genesis re-created). These are strongly formalist but suggest the inspiration of cave painting. Korf quotes the lectures of the art critic Herbert Read on the caves of Altamira, in which he suggested that the human ability to survive and evolve as the highest form…