Toru Kuranuki Untitled (2022)

“To paint with rare stones and minerals is completely different from painting with a brush.
By painting with minerals, an artist becomes one with the Earth, and an embracing of the Eternal is achieved.” Indeed, perhaps the signature characteristic of Kuranuki’s paintings are that they are painted using rare stones and minerals such as crystal, amethyst, azurite and malachite, which he ruggedly drags upon a canvas instead of a brush. Kuranuki’s bold “stone-strokes” are almost primal in their minimal compositions, but the sheer raw power of Kuranuki’s paintings symbolise and call to mind a primordial world in which the Earth is still young and the dawn of man has yet to arise. In fact, the artist actively attaches the actual stone he uses upon the painting itself, perhaps as a poignant denouement to his paintings, yet this particular work, painted with amethyst and using supple golds upon stark blacks, features the rare mineral as only an accompaniment to the painting, rather than being a part of the painting itself.