Kim Anno draws from a number of sources for inspiration including Japanese Ukiyo-e prints and Islamic art and architecture, yet her paintings are decisively her own. More than the content of these influences, Anno focuses on form, the language of abstraction as it appears in religious and ritual art. At the heart of her work is an interest in the complexity of beauty, and the way it manifests itself across a wide spectrum of artistic production. Her work lies somewhere between high art and ritual object, referencing the latter, but strongly grounded in the contemporary.

For her current body of work, Kim Anno has painted in oil on aluminum, thereby lending the work a measure of luminosity. In Angstrom (52 x 39 inches), uneven vertical bands painted with a comb gradate from red to green, giving the appearance of wood grain. These bands serve to flatten the surface of the painting while at the same time creating an illusionistic effect with their overlapping and intermeshing. On top of this ground, an energetic series of red, black and green horizontal lines rises from the bottom of the panel and dissipates. Anno refers to these lines as elements of broken text, just beginning to tell a story. In the fluidity of her lines and in her economy of means, Anno has deftly synthesized elements from disparate places and times to create her own form of graceful and meaningful abstraction.

This series of work has been funded by the Eureka Fellowship. Kim Anno has recently received the Fleishhacker award and her work will be featured in 2004 at the Berkeley Art Museum’s exhibition of all Fleishhacker award recipients. Anno’s collaboration with poet Anne Carson, Simple Souls, will also be published this year in a limited edition of 50 copies. She is a professor of Art and Cultural Studies at CCAC.

* Susan Ressler, Asian American Artists, Women Artists of the American West (Indiana, Purdue University, 1998), online, Internet.