Susumu Kamijo painted poodles for a while. It was less about the poodle than it was about the shapes and compositions a pooch represents. It was a sort of manicuring chaos of an animal. It was always beautifully colored and rendered, abstracted up to a certain point, but it was most definitely a dog. Now, in his new solo show, The Motherland, on view at Venus Over Manhattan, Kamijo is still focusing on animals, canines, birds, a lamb, but with a new focus on color and shapes, patterns and what the viewer can perceive as both a figure and an abstraction.
