THOUGH Japanese born (in Kyoto, 1944) Kuroda has lived for over a quarter century in Paris, where seemingly he is a respected figure. He does not wear his Orientalism on his kimono sleeves, however the style is thoroughly "international", even international eclectic. That term might seem to deny him a distinctive personality, which would be unjust, since the artistic personality is strong, clear cut and in some cases almost domineering.
Black and white dominate the exhibition, often in hard, angular shapes and flat areas of colour which at first seem as unyielding and unresonant as the Hard Edge abstraction of the 1960s. The impression is misleading, since other dimensions then open up, almost as if you had discovered another field of visual activity at the back of your television screen. Certain of the works convey a strange sense of vertigo, while others give an equally strange feeling of strain and imminent collapse. And other pictures which at first appear to be entirely abstract turn out to have tiny teasing, enigmatic figures dwarfed further by the flat, massive shapes.
An introductory essay says that Kuroda is obsessed by images of metamorphosis, chaos, etc which is revealing, even if we have heard the same thing before from other artists, and many times over. In one large painting, a vulvalike shape in the centre threatens to expand and swallow up its surrounds like a volcanic crack in the ground; in the towering, and impressive, triptych called The Darkness of Paradise, which is dominated by resonant blacks and purples, a white shape like a female mannequin stands dead in the centre and splits up the entire work like a seismic rift - in a cliff face, a sort of visual caesura. This female shape, incidentally, is repeated in various works like a musical theme, and at times I was reminded of the American Robert Moskowitz.
In quieter and more contemplative mood, the works on paper just inside the door have a cooler, more svelte and harmonious quality. They utilise softer, less jagged shapes - for instance, a kind of large, inverted leaf motif, and they also demonstrate a skilful and subtilised use of dark, velvety colours. This is authentic Parisian cosmopolitan art, cultured and elegant and with no overstatement or rhetoric. By contrast, the oil pastels in the inner room are almost commonplace - the kind of thing which Picasso and Matisse started, and which hundreds of artists have imitated since.
