GALLERY MoMo Ryogoku is pleased to present the third solo exhibition of Chika Osaka titled Osakaruta. In the show, the artist will exhibit 46 same size paintings witch are based on Japanese card game, Karuta.

Using gradation technique, she successes to represent her lithographs like Ukiyo-e. The technique of prints applied to her paintings and drawings, which made her works especially unique. She depicts Japanese traditional manner and patterns of clothes, buildings and background with details, however the theme of her works is the life in the society. People in her works try to live fervent but comically and idiotically even thought they are faced with the harsh conditions.

Since the beginning of her career, Osaka has worked on finding a way to show the works effectively with the texts. Getting a lot of inspiration from her words, the artist writes stories and clips a scene from the story. However, her works do not describe the stories and do not complement the stories like book illustrations because the works are not expressed the scenes directly and viewers can interpret them in different way without the stories. In her last exhibition, Osaka attempted to show the hidden connections among people by suggesting a person relates to many people. The works and texts represent how the relationships have expanded unlimitedly.

In this exhibition, Osaka employed the format of Karuta that is Japanese card game for children and Japanese people have enjoyed Karuta visually and aurally as play and remembering the letters and the proverbs. In addition, Karuta used propaganda massages for children in the past. Inspired by the relationship between images and words that Karuta has, the artist put texts like the monology, which people did on the social net service, and the phrase told from someone on each work. Comparing to the last show, the narrativity and suggestion of texts in the recent works of Osaka are less. However, the texts like lines in the play give the viewers various imaginations and add new points of views on her works.   

Chika Osaka was born in 1984 in Tokyo and received M.A. from Tokyo University of the Arts in 2011. She won the prize of Tateyama in the exhibition of Japan Print Association in 2010 and in Shell Art Award in 2011．In 2014, Osaka received an honorable mention from the Vision of Contemporary Art and joined the group exhibition at Ichihara Lakeside Museum. 

Artist Comment

In this exhibition, I wrote texts that describe the tweets or the phrases that told from others in a day that thinks back about the future and the past when people have time and money at their disposal with the format of Karuta that consists of 46 Japanese letters. Through the 46 letters, I attempt to represent the feeling of pleasures, the negative thoughts, and the complicated emotions that usually we cannot look in. In addition, it is my pleasure if you have sympathy with a person who lives valiantly in my work.

 “Iroha-karuta” is intrinsically the educational tool for children who play it for remembering the letters. I would like to enjoy the “Osakaruta” for thinking what the life is.