Aki Kuroda

Born in Kyoto in 1944, Aki Kuroda moved to Paris in 1970 to pursue artistic endeavors. His early work demonstrated a sensitivity and maturity, and his work has been recognised by art critics and collectors as being of significance since these early exhibitions in Europe and the United States of America.

These exhibitions saw his work exhibited internationally, in Chicago, in the South of France, and at the Yugoslaia Museum of Modern Art, culminating in 1976 with his winning the European Painting Prize Ostende Belgium. His first solo exhibition was in 1978 in Bermerhaven, Germany. Kuroda became a regular exhibitor at the Galerie Maeght in Paris, and his work has been exhibited at other major European galleries since 1980.

Since early in his career Kuroda has experimented with all manner of art forms ranging from drawing and photography, to painting and sculptural work. He has created theatre and opera set designs, and in addition to this has edited magazines, created installation works, and undertaken live performances.

Kuroda's quasi-mystical approach has resulted in his working on a diverse range of projects, examples include a collaborative project with Tadao Ando for a residential building mural in Osaka, Japan; or working with the Contemporary Museum of Art in Strasbourg, France. In the 1990's he worked on Ballet Stage Sets for the Opera de Paris, and other illustrious projects encouraging the aesthetic and the intellectual rigour of theatre projects and worked alongside universities. In 2003 he worked with Richard Rogers on a theatre and education centre in Kyoto, Japan, creating sculptural walls and murals, painting the theatre safety curtains as well as the mosaic floors.

More recently, in Lyon, France he collaborated with architects, concrete engineers, students, and landscape designer Patrick Blanc. Blanc is a world-renowned specialist creating "vegetal walls" such as those in the Pershing Hall Hotel in Paris, designed by Andre Putman, or the newly opened Museum of Primitive Art in Paris, designed by Jean Nouvel. For this project in Lyon, Kuroda imagined a "suspended garden" that reflects "Cosmos". Composed of a free-standing concrete slab of a size 80 meters long by 10 meters wide and 20 centimeters thick it is technically complex and visually stunning.

Among the impressive list of solo and collective exhibitions includes the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo and Osaka, Japan in 1993, 1994 and 2006, where his work is featured in their permanent collection. At the Fondation Maeght in Saint-Paul de Vence Kuroda's paintings hang surrounded by the work of Miro, Chagal, Dubuffet and other giants of the 20th century and contemporary art.

Rabih Hage is showing for the first time in the UK the work of Aki Kuroda in October 2006. At this occasion, Rabih Hage is collaborating with Kuroda on an original limited editions "sculpture- furniture" project which will be part of Kurod's London installation of his "CosmoGarden" in Rabih Hage Gallery.