Connoisseur Contemporary, the sister gallery of Connoisseur Art Gallery, is presenting its first major exhibition of the year with a solo exhibition of renowned international contemporary artist, Oscar Oiwa this Spring. A well respected artist whose works are collected by several important museums in Japan and the United States and auctioned by Christie’s Hong Kong, Oiwa is one of Connoisseur Contemporary’s latest additions to its core artists.
Oscar Oiwa is an interesting artist for many reasons. Born of Japanese descent in São Paulo, Brazil, then living as an artist in Tokyo, London, and currently in New York after receiving a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002, Oiwa has become a “globalized” artist whose experiences in the different cities have culminated in a montage of landscapes mirroring current events and world issues. “Mangrove” dated 2008, a three-panel piece measuring more than 2 by 3 metres, speaks of the relation between progress and nature. Pipes are seen growing up the ground while boats and submarines swim like small fishes in the dark murky water, an apt analogy of the result of the world’s hunger for energy, when oil prices rose to an all-time high of almost
US$ 150 per barrel last July.
Not only is Oscar Oiwa considered one of the most accomplished artists to record the impact of globalization, he is also praised for his unique style and representation; influenced by both Japanese art and from the West in varied forms. His works hint of the byobu (Japanese folding screen with several joined panels) and contemporary manga (Japanese comics and print cartoons), Claude Monet, Anselm Kiefer (German painter and sculptor, b. 1945) and science fiction films. “Sun and Moon”, another three-panel piece of the same size, is a poetic landscape with reference to René Magritte’s (Belgian surrealist artist, 1898 to 1967) concept of “day and night”. With his unique flair of cartoon pop infused with a dark atmosphere; his contrast of colour, image and sentiment that creates a psychological backdrop to the overpowering situations that he paints, Oiwa has become known for his witty and thought-provoking images.
The exhibition is named after the painting, “Bathtub Man”, a highlight of this show. It depicts Oscar Oiwa’s playful use of colour and humour. The idea came from natural hot springs in Japan, of which some have medicinal power and people, especially the sick and elderly, soak in them to rest and relax. The bright, vivid colours represent optimism. Part of Oiwa’s originality is his use of overwhelming scale to depict a world closely familiar to us and yet completely unexpected, the breadth of vision in which he connects opposing yet co-existing elements in his large multi-paneled oil paintings as well as a sense of rhythm and the creation of metaphors that convey his meanings.
