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Shinro OHTAKE: Shell & Occupy 4
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Written by In the document   
Published: October 21 2009

”Beach 1" (2009); oil paints, oil sticks, color copies, sand, plant seed, varnish, acrylic sheet, and tree, 40.5 x 31.5 cm, courtesy of the artist and Take Ninagawa copy right(c) Shinro OHTAKE

So far, the “貼” series of exhibitions has reviewed Ohtake’s role over the past 30 years in developing a new visual language in Japanese contemporary art that responds to mass media imagery, underground music culture and the urban environment. This exhibition will consist entirely of works made in the past year, including the “Beach” series of small-scale collages made while the artist worked on designing the recently opened Naoshima Bath “I♥湯,” a functioning bath and art environment commissioned for the art island Benesse Art Site Naoshima. Presented in custom frames that blur the distinctions between photograph, canvas and sculptural object, works in the “Beach” series use vintage photographs and posters of swimsuit models as the basis for mixed-media collages incorporating colorful oil and acrylic flourishes, patterned fabrics and found ephemera. Echoing themes apparent in the Naoshima Bathhouse, each work becomes a defaced archive or broken window into a bygone era of sun, play and titillation. Ohtake takes this idea further with the new collage series “Memory of Color,” in which he applies gestural color studies of paint over densely textured beds of photographic and printed matter. Here, the means by which we record and revisit history become nothing more than formal placeholders for sensual delirium—violent blooms of red, yellow, blue and purple that obliterate the comforting restraints of legible information. Also on display will be a three-meter-high, two-panel work that expands “Memory of Color” to architectural proportions. Shinro OHTAKE
Born in Tokyo in 1955, Shinro Ohtake is widely regarded as one of the most influential Japanese artists of the past 30 years. His work is held in numerous Japanese and international public collections including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; Naoshima Fukutake Art Museum Foundation, Naoshima; and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Recent exhibitions include “New Universe on the Road,” at the Fukuoka Art Museum and Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art in 2007, and the groundbreaking retrospective, “Shinro Ohtake Zen- Kei Retrospective: 1955-2006,” at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, in 2006. * The text provided by Take Ninagawa.

Last Updated on October 17 2009
 

Editor's Note by Satoshi KOGANEZAWA


This is part of the “貼” series of solo exhibition of Shinro Ohtake which has been held at Take Ninagawa since 2008. It is the first time for the series to be held in 2009. As shown in the title of the exhibition, Ohtake’s creations are characteristics in that they are made by “pasting (貼)” printed materials, paints or other things which look like even garbage. Nevertheless, his works show that “pasting (貼)” is not an only method to be used in his creations. In other words, although, apparently his works seem to have been created by pasting various kinds of materials randomly, there is some looseness on picture planes, which allows viewers to find some different images in his works simultaneously. This must be the reason he has succeeded in creating new and vivid impressions of his works, without evoking for us their nostalgic and introspective images. (Translated by Nozomi Nakayama)


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