NYAB Event - “Lights and Shad­ows” Exhibition

“Lights and Shad­ows” Exhibition

Onishi Gallery

This event has ended.

Onishi Gallery presents “Lights and Shad­ows,” the inau­gural group show of Onishi Project, an art man­age­ment divi­sion of Onishi Gallery and a show­case for emerg­ing, mid-career and lead­ing artists around the world. Onishi Project con­nects artists and art patrons across the globe, and enables patrons to locate orig­i­nal paint­ings, sculp­tures and pho­tographs at afford­able prices in the inter­na­tional art market.

“Lights and Shad­ows” fea­tures three Japan­ese artists who each work in dif­fer­ent media to cre­ate monotone-colored pieces. Through pen draw­ing, instal­la­tion, and pho­tog­ra­phy, these artists present images that play with the shad­ows of their cre­ations. The dance between light and shadow that each of these artists explores raises ques­tions about and beyond the search for beauty in dark­ness; they probe notions of abun­dance and empti­ness, per­ma­nence and tem­po­rari­ness, and the weight of mate­r­ial cre­ation and its last­ing impression.

The title of this show reflects Japan­ese aes­thet­ics that find beauty in hid­den places, and each of the pieces in this show appre­ci­ates this inter­est. Just as light gives shape to mate­r­ial through its shine, so too does shadow pat­tern space through the image of the material’s absence. Light and shadow cre­ate com­plete images through reflec­tion of each other and inter­ac­tion with the space around them.

A native of Kumamoto pre­fec­ture, Wataru Mat­sumura has been an active artist since 1967. Using pen and paper, Mat­sumura cre­ates intri­cate and time-consuming pieces that evoke the tex­tile pat­terns of both Japan­ese kimonos and west­ern fab­ric designs.

Akira Sakata, for­mer Vice-Director and now Adviser at the Kumamoto Pre­fec­tural Art Museum, reflects on the influ­ence of the Kumamoto Cas­tle in Matsumura’s works. He notes that "The castle’s black and white walls embody the spirit and world of ‘black ink’ in Matsumura’s draw­ings. While I feel things and quan­tity in West­ern black, I feel the heart and spirit in Matsumura’s black. Fur­ther­more, the ‘shape’ in Matsumura’s work is based on Japan­ese tra­di­tional shape — what is called ‘the shape of things.’ This form was passed down in Japan­ese cul­ture through people’s daily lives.
I feel that the den­sity of [Matsumura’s] paint­ings as well as his spirit have inten­si­fied in his work much like a Bud­dhist man­dala. His minute and mas­ter­fully con­trolled tech­nique of pen draw­ing cre­ates a small and mys­te­ri­ous uni­verse, alien like the moon and the places of fairy tales."

Shinichi Naka­hara is an artist and an inte­rior and prod­uct designer, spe­cial­iz­ing in two-dimensional, three-dimensional and space rep­re­sen­ta­tional art­works. He began study­ing paint­ing at the age of 15 under the promi­nent painter, Susumu Fukuyama, founder of the Keisho Art Asso­ci­a­tion in Japan.

Naka­hata learned clas­sic and mod­ern tech­niques of oil, water­color, and tem­pera paint­ing from Fukuyama, and in 1981, began work­ing for a fur­ni­ture man­u­fac­turer. He has exhib­ited in Italy, the Repub­lic of Korea, Tai­wan, and Japan.

The site-specific instal­la­tion that Naka­hara has cre­ated for this exhi­bi­tion is enti­tled, “Accu­mu­la­tion Rebirth,” and was cre­ated after the earth­quake in Japan in 2011. He puts his heart and soul into the piece for wish­ing recov­ery and rebirth in the affected areas.

Tet­suro Sato grad­u­ated from Nihon Uni­ver­sity in 1969 to become the Art Direc­tor and pho­tog­ra­pher of the Top­pan Print­ing Com­pany. In 1987, Sato estab­lished the Sug­arl Stu­dio, and since then has pre­sented a series of shows in Tokyo and Osaka.

Hen­gao may be trans­lated into Eng­lish as “funny face,” a phrase that cap­tures the work Tet­suro Sato has cre­ated for this exhi­bi­tion. In it, Japan­ese mod­els pose for his cam­era hold­ing a vari­ety of glass­ware such as lenses and ves­sels. Inspired by the Japan­ese phe­nom­ena purikura where young girls take pocket-sized pho­tos of them­selves, Sato takes the place of the photo booth to cap­ture their poses. He prefers not to edit or dis­tort the film, but lets abstrac­tion occur through use of props and body language.

By hav­ing the mod­els’ gazes medi­ated through glass, Sato’s work explores (with a sense of humor) the tra­di­tional power struc­ture between viewer and sub­ject. In front of a black back­ground, limbs, eyes, and facial expres­sions reflect, refract and tran­scend tra­di­tional photo-portraiture. Instead of a pas­sive one-way rela­tion­ship, Sato encour­ages the viewer to seek out the beauty in the model, which is often exag­ger­ated to strange pro­por­tions. Like the girls in Yoshit­omo Nara’s work, the end result is alien, humor­ous, and wistful.

Media

• Painting
• Drawing
• Photography

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