Samson Projects presents a solo exhibition by Kenji Fujita titled Systematic Gaiety: 2000-2008.
Systematic Gaiety: 2000-2008 is an exhibition of selected sculpture and works on paper made over the past nine years. The works are part of a trajectory that began in the late 1970�s, when Fujita began to move his painting in a sculptural direction. Fujita uses wood, cardboard, paper, plaster-cloth, felt, aqua-resin and paint. These materials are used to make and transform objects in several ways: there is recycled old work that has been cut up and re-made into new objects; there are found objects, such as cardboard boxes, that get laminated with material such as plaster-cloth and aqua-resin; there are new objects that are made just in order to be cut up. This process of finding, making, undoing and redoing makes it possible to get from one point to another, with turns that are unpredictable: sometimes they�re ordered logically, other times they�re messily scrambled. It�s a process that allows Fujita to see his work as something organic. The detritus of the old pieces becomes raw material for the new pieces. Working in series, with fixed meanings held in suspense, Fujita�s art is at once finished & unfinished, painting & sculpture, fact & fiction.
Kenji Fujita has made sculpture and related works on paper for over thirty years. Born in New York, he moved to Williamsburg, Brooklyn in the early 80s to live and work. He had his first solo show in 1985 at the Cable Gallery run by Nicole Klagsbrun and Clarissa Dalrymple. He went on to exhibit at Luhring Augustine, where he had three solo shows and a two-person show with David Winter. Fujita also had solo exhibition with Galerie Jean Bernier (Athens, Greece) and Daniel Weinberg (LA, CA). Fujita�s work was included in Aperto XLIII, Biennale Di Venezia organized by Dan Cameron and in the inaugural exhibition of the Jablonka Galerie (Cologne, Germany). Fujita is the recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pollock-Krasner and Guggenheim Foundations. His work is in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum (NY, NY), the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (LA, CA) and the Weatherspoon Art Gallery (Greensboro, NC). Fujita has been living and working in upstate NY since 1997. He is Co-chair of Sculpture at the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College and a faculty member in the School of Visual Arts� MFA Program.
