Tokyo-based artist Daisuke Ohba has managed to transcend the medium of painting and create something akin to installation art with his new works now on display at the Daiwa Foundation Japan House. His use of pearlescent paint creates images that transform when viewed from different angles and in the changing natural light. When viewed away from the windows overlooking Regent's Park, Bukka, a giant canvas covered in painterly chrysanthemum blossoms, appears as a white-on-white study in texture. Moving to the opposite side or switching on the warm incandescent light of the gallery's chandelier causes the canvas to literally bloom with iridescent colour. In the artist's words, 'the work adapts to circumstances rather than controls them.' It is this interaction between artwork, viewer and environment that leads Ohba to view his works as installation in painting form.
Bukka belongs to a group of representational paintings of natural subjects made for the exhibition. Another canvas, Sakura, depicts cherry blossoms clinging to branches. A surprising effect is created through the juxtaposition of the impasto flowers and the negative space of the branches, which have been left free of paint to expose glimpses of the white primed canvas. The result is sculptural, a relief in paint which responds to the play of light, another example of how the artist pushes the limits of his medium.
Light is integral to the artist's creation process as well. For many of his works, Ohba projects an image onto the canvas and paints the light, a process made more exacting by the difficult to distinguish hues of his iridescent paint. He has used this technique to inform his body of non-representational work as well. The composition for Spiral (transformation) #2 is based on a projection of a Buddhist mandala which has been abstracted into pure pattern.
A short documentary film screened at the artist's talk on 14 October showed the artist preparing a canvas for the work Spectrum. Bands of iridescent paint were generously poured over the painting surface, which lay flat on the studio floor amidst the humidifiers that keep the paint wet and workable for several hours. Perched above the work, Ohba steadied his anxiously shaking hand after several false starts before beginning the two and a half hour process of carving a precise checkered pattern into the paint with his brush.
When I asked what he was thinking about as he started to paint, wondering what caused him to appear so anxious, Ohba replied, only half joking, that he would think about how the wasted paint that dripped off the sides of the canvas cost him around 200GBP. His process is also about striving for perfection through repetition, and he references the Buddhist practice of copying calligraphy thousands of times over to achieve a pure and flawless product. With this practice as his model, one can understand the trembling of his hand.
As a final note, I should mention that the iridescent paint is incredibly difficult to photograph, so my pictures do not do the works justice. One must see them in person to fully appreciate the subtlety of their shimmering surfaces.
No comments:
Post a Comment