Roy Kiyooka

Often regarded for his strides in conceptual photography, Japanese-Canadian artist Roy Kiyooka first emerged in the Vancouver art scene as an advocate of post-painterly abstraction. Influenced by his encounters with Barnett Newman and Clement Greenberg at the Emma Lake Workshops, Kiyooka pushed Vancouver beyond regionalism with hard-edge abstraction. Throughout his career, Kiyooka assumed teaching positions at the Vancouver School of Art (now Emily Carr University of Art + Design) and University of British Columbia, encouraging a new generation of artists to look towards an international context in their work.