Tomio Koyama Gallery Tennoz is pleased to present Satoshi Ohno’s solo exhibition, “Flowers that bloom and disappear, the intoxicating smell of honey and lukewarm bare feet.” The exhibition marks Ohno’s sixth solo presentation with the gallery, and introduces a selection of new large-scale paintings.
【About Satoshi Ohno and His Works: Nature and Artifice, Light and Darkness…a Fantastic and Chaotic Fusion of Contrasting Values】
Satoshi Ohno was born in 1980 in Gifu, Japan. He received a B.A. from Tokyo Zokei University in 2004, and currently lives and works in the city of Fujiyoshida, Yamanashi, where his studio is located.
Ohno states, “The essence is to learn things through experience, and my motivation for producing work is to bring new sensations to life.” *1 While feeling the overwhelming energy of the primeval forest situated at the foot of Mt. Fuji near his studio, Ohno has continued to express and pursue his own inner self in the realms of nature and contemporary society, by means of what could be described as his “own unique form of expressionism.”
One of the major characteristics of Ohno’s works is the way in which contrasting existing values such as nature and artifice, life and death, light and darkness, East and West; coalesce and are made to coexist within the image. Over the course of his practice, motifs such as self-portraits, androgynous figures, primeval forests, subtropical plants, and prisms have come to be important elements of his oeuvre.
The worlds that unfold in his work are fantastical and paradoxical, fertile and chaotic— reflecting Ohno’s continued search for fundamental answers and a sense harmony from both perspectives of reality and the imaginary.
His major solo exhibitions include “Prism Violet” (The Contemporary Museum Honolulu, 2007), while he has also participated in group shows such as “STANCE or DISTANCE? -Connecting Myself to the World” (Contemporary Art Museum, Kumamoto, 2015), “Art Scope 2012-2014 -Remains of Their Journeys” (Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, 2014), “The Way of Painting” (Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, 2014), and “REAL JAPANESQUE: The Unique World of Japanese Contemporary Art” (National Museum of Art, Osaka, 2012).
His works are included in the collections of the National Gallery of Victoria, Hara Museum ARC, Toyota Art Collection, and The National Museum of Art, Osaka, among others.
【About the Exhibition and New Works】
Ohno mentions having been greatly influenced by the outdoor rave parties and club culture he experienced in the 2000s when he was in his 20s.
The visual contrast between the forest and the speakers installed there, the auditory stimulation of techno and psychedelic music, the lukewarm atmosphere of these places, and the feeling of the morning dew on his skin had become the source for the images depicted in Ohno’s work, forming the core of his imagination, and strongly influencing his values.
The addictive nature of the curiosity that draws one to these things has something in common with today’s virtual world of the internet, social media, and games, etc. In his new works presented on this occasion, this surging energy in contemporary society is conveyed through people casually hanging out at the rave party, as well as the speakers upon which they sit.
Flowers, mushrooms, and subtropical plants that serve as contrasting motifs are depicted much larger than their actual scale, creating a hallucinatory, fantasy-like, and somewhat dreamy world, while also emitting a quiet yet sweltering sense of vitality.
These works are painted on canvases larger than human-scale, such as 270 x 180 cm, in accordance to the artist’s wish “to enable the viewing experience (of the works) to evoke a sense of pressure, with the major point being that they extend beyond human height.”*2 Such is inspired by the sensation of setting foot into a large primeval forest, making viewers feel as if they are immersed in the world of the work.
The lives of flowers, plants, and humans are indeed finite—destined to bloom and disappear. Even so, we find ourselves enticed by desire and impermanence, as if lured by the intoxicating smell of honey. Ohno’s work tries to make us intuitively realize something about the world in which we live, and thus they perhaps not so much depictions of otherworldly realms, but our actual world in reality.
We welcome viewers to take this opportunity to experience Ohno’s latest creative endeavors.
*1, 2 8TV 082 IN THE ARTIST’S STUDIO, Satoshi Ohno exhibition “Beautiful Dreaming.”
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For press inquiries, please contact: press@tomiokoyamagallery.com (Makiko Okado)
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