Artwork Description

Title: Three Kinds of Artifact
Artist: Keiko Moriuchi
Date: n.d.
Medium: Mixed media
Dimensions: 16.5 x 11.2 in. (42 x 28.5 cm)

1. Artwork Identification
Keiko Moriuchi’s Three Kinds of Artifact is a dazzling example of her signature mixed media practice. Measuring 42 x 28.5 cm, the piece bursts with color, gilded textures, and intricate ornamentation, deploying a range of materials—from foil and plastic pearls to heavy gold impasto. The central composition evokes a relic or ritual object, with its framed, symmetrical design and religious undertones. The work presents as both image and object, possessing a palpable materiality that transcends traditional two-dimensionality.

2. Artistic Style and Influences
Moriuchi’s distinctive aesthetic lies at the intersection of Gutai’s performative materialism and a unique, almost devotional craft language. Here, her use of high-relief impasto and reflective surfaces brings to mind the altarpieces and reliquaries of Byzantine and folk traditions, while the spontaneous application of color and texture links her unmistakably to the legacy of Gutai’s rejection of convention. The painting becomes a sculptural tableau—a hybrid form that reveres ornament while resisting stylistic containment.

3. Historical Context
Although Moriuchi officially joined the Gutai Art Association in 1968, she was an active participant in its exhibitions from the early 1960s. Gutai, founded in postwar Japan, encouraged artists to explore raw, immediate interactions with matter. Moriuchi’s time in New York, during a period of ascendant Minimalism and Conceptualism, deeply informed her desire to reconcile Eastern and Western modalities of meaning-making. This piece reflects that dialectic—ritual and randomness, opulence and absurdity, history and abstraction converge in one intricate surface.

4. Provenance
Provenance documentation can be provided upon contact.

5. Condition and Conservation
The artwork is in very good condition. The impasto and embellishments are intact, with no noted losses or instability in the layered elements. The three-dimensional surface retains its structural integrity and visual clarity. No conservation work is currently necessary.

6. Artistic Significance
Three Kinds of Artifact exemplifies Keiko Moriuchi’s synthesis of Gutai sensibilities with a deeply personal language of ritual, craft, and excess. The work defies easy categorization—straddling painting, sculpture, and spiritual object—and serves as a testament to the artist’s enduring relevance. In its exuberant tactility and conceptual ambiguity, the piece invites viewers to reconsider the boundaries between aesthetic experience and sacred encounter. Moriuchi’s work remains a critical link in the legacy of postwar Japanese avant-garde, particularly in her exploration of femininity, ornament, and cultural hybridity.