Following the forced relocation and incarceration of Japanese citizens through government-mandated internment camps, Japanese-Canadian painter Roy Kiyooka fled to nearby Alberta and found himself developing a hard-edge painting practice that was singular in the Canadian context. Which employed recent material advancements of the 1960s, such as Rhoplex emulsion, to explore similar questions of light refraction and materiality across surfaces, of which a 1965 example is on view. Kiyooka’s painting career was short-lived, producing works for less than a decade. Works from the Magic Ring Series are held in the collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery.

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. In 1971, Kiyooka was named the head of the NSCAD painting department.

Formal ideas of pictorial depth and flatness were central concerns to his early practice. Using a combination of aqua-tex acrylic paint and rhoplex emulsion, Kiyooka developed visual tension through differing matte surfaces, guiding the viewer between areas emphasizing flatness and material presence against more glossy finishes.