The title is a mathematical term, similar to ‘or’ in grammar. Oshiro picked Logical Disjunction as title to suggest the ambivalent nature of his works, which are often described as sculpture or painting, abstract or representational, minimal or maximal. They inhabit the grey area between the poles of these binary oppositions.
Kaz Oshiro was born in 1967, in Okinawa, Japan. He has lived and worked in Los Angeles for the past 25 years, and earned a BA and a MFA from California State University, Los Angeles. Oshiro is known for his sculptural paintings, which create a lingua franca that plays on the global consumerist culture by imitating mundane commonplace objects that are predominately located in the domestic sphere.
Since the early phase of his career, Oshiro’s artistic inspiration sprang from everyday objects, such as old microwave ovens, amplifiers, kitchen cabinets, washers and car bumpers. He recreated them by stretching the canvas over stretch bars, assembling them three-dimensionally, and finally giving them a trompe-l’ œil extreme precision. The finished works are sculptural images, as much as a volumetric representation of the original objects.
Ironically, Oshiro’s remarkably realistic “objects” are not functional: amplifiers are mute and cabinets are sealed. The practical use of the objects is deliberately precluded, thus subverting the expectations of the viewer. Flawed by their fictional history in the form of stains, blots, scratches and stickers, they are meant to be utilitarian objects with the slightest possible representational value, yet they are rendered as mediums of Oshiro’s artistic intentions. The meanings are not to be found on the surface but on the back of the open paintings, which reveal a void and expose the secret of his canvas stretchers. It is Oshiro’s intention to reveal his practice, after all the works are nothing more than mere illusions for the sake of art.The ambiguity of the works lures the viewer into pondering over the art of Oshiro, which in turn aims to incite the viewer to reflect upon current modes of representation in our contemporary society.
Later, Oshiro began to take a formalist shift and pared his canvases down to their core essential status as art objects. He continues to expand on the idea of painting as a spatial and conceptual practice, and further simplified their surfaces to heighten their phenomenological effects. Although some of them are still pointing at cabinets and amplifiers, there is a radical toning down of visual details, and a distancing from symbolism. In addition, there are monochromatic paintings that occupy the exhibition space in a way one least expects: they crouch in the corners and collapse onto the floor, entering the place of the viewer. Through dynamic interactions with the environment and context, Oshiro’s works turn the gallery into a theater of circumstance. The paintings look like boards that are being wedged forcefully onto the wall. Illusion is achieved by the pseudo bending and folding of the canvases, balanced skillfully by a modest and reserved appearance. Oshiro once again directs our attention to the gap between what we see and what we believe, creating experiential moments where knowledge and experience diverge.
-Galerie Perrotin
Image: © Kaz Oshiro, Courtesy of Galerie Perrotin
