Join us at Bellevue Arts Museum for an Artist Talk with Ko Kirk Yamahira on Wednesday, July 29, from 6:00–7:30 PM.

Gather for an intimate conversation exploring the artist's creative process beneath Untitled (2018), installed in the building's ground-floor Forum. This special program offers a final opportunity to reflect on the ideas and methods behind the work in the Steven Holl building.

Free Registration is requested.

About the Artist

Ko Kirk Yamahira, a Seattle-based contemporary artist, redefines the textile medium through methodical deconstruction. By partially unraveling canvas, he blurs the boundary between painting and sculpture, turning the flat surface into a three-dimensional form. This process deliberately engages with and reinterprets craft traditions by focusing on the material's innate tactility, fragility, and underlying structure. By revealing its hidden geometric patterns and raw potential, Yamahira's work pushes the boundaries of what is possible with a familiar textile. 
 
The resulting pieces cultivate a dialogue between controlled forms and organic flow, reflecting on the nature of time, transformation, and the fluid boundaries between art and craft. This conversation between opposing forces - tension and release, surface and form, presence and absence - animates his work with a powerful, minimalist elegance. His tactile works inhabit and redefine space, often draping elegantly from walls and ceilings. 
 
Yamahira's work is held in numerous public and private collections, including the Frye Art Museum, Meta, Microsoft, the Port of Portland, and King County Public Art Collections. His practice has been recognized with prestigious awards, including the inaugural Grand Prize from the Alden Mason Foundation (2024) and the Kayla Skinner Special Recognition Award from the Seattle Art Museum (2017).