MEGUMI OGITA GALLERY is pleased to announce its participation in ART OSAKA 2024 Galleries Section.

 

Alfredo Martinez is an artist from New York City who likes to disassemble guns and observe how they work in order to fire them, which is the subject of his paintings. Martinez’s gun paintings reflect a period of unremitting war, riots and shootings, one of which is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). With the coloured radiograph-like paintings and splattered ink, the images of guns that dominated the inside of the artist, and his various behaviours in cultivating his own mythology, Martinez can be regarded as a genealogy of *neo-expressionism. His desperate expression is a provocative statement on contemporary society, which also encompasses sharp insights into the darkness that infests the art industry, such as the deception of authenticity and money laundering. It would be no exaggeration to say that Martinez’s creation, words, deeds and life itself were artistic performances. 

 

*The new figurative painting trend that emerged at the end of the 1970s and into the 1980s. In reaction to the minimalist, conceptual art that ruled the 1970s, a style in which figures, historical and mythological subjects are depicted with rough brushstrokes, flourished worldwide, especially amongst young artists. 

 

Ayumu Fushiguro graduated from Tama Art University’s Department of Painting, Printmaking in 2003, then he made shadowy oil paintings in which he layered colours to create birds, flowers and tree roots. In 2013, by treating clay in the same way as oil paint, he completed works in which the objects seem to have leapt out of the painting into three dimensions. Attempting to integrate his previous works, Fushiguro’s favourite bird shapes acquired abstraction, and their contours became increasingly vague, moving towards an expression of a human-like form. Fushikuro has consistently maintained an interest in figuration, incorporating the transient beauty of motifs into his works. Each of his handmade works has its own character and warmth, and is a delight to the viewers. The fluidity and the continuity from two to three-dimensional forms of Fushiguro’s works symbolise the impermanence, from which we can read the message that change is the essence of the universe.

 

Yoshimasa Tsuchiya was born in 1977 and specialised in sculpture at Tokyo University of the Arts, and completed PhD, Sculpture Conservation at the postgraduate course in 2007. Tsuchiya has established a unique painting method in which the inner colours faintly emerge from the white surface. He also uses techniques similar to that used for Buddhist statues, whereby the head is split open and eyes such as crystal or glass are inserted, to create works with a mysterious look. The glass eyes and other glass parts have been created by artist Fukuo Tanaka. Tsuchiya’s motifs are symbolic animal figures that embody intangible ideas in the shape of living things. The images of animals that appear in myths and tales are the origins of his ideas, and the creatures born from them have repeatedly mutated and cross-bred, taking the inspiration from improved garden plants and ornamental fish, and developed into a variety of forms. Resin works are replicated in silicon moulds from original wood carvings in Tsuchiya’s studio, and Tsuchiya himself paints each piece.

 

Kengo Nakamura studied Japanese painting at Tama Art University and its postgraduate course, and has created unique paintings with motifs that represent contemporary society, such as emoticons in emails, manga balloons and character silhouettes. With growing international reputation, Nakamura’s second solo exhibition at AKI Gallery “Kengo Nakamura’s Contemporary Japanese-Style Painting” will be held in August 2024. This exhibition will focus on his new paintings since the last exhibition there, and in addition to previous series such as “Without Me”, “Shinbun Itchi” and “Japanese Frogs”, the exhibition will also feature a new series of paintings of Japanese hiragana “Hiragana Painting”, comprehensively for the first time. In the 1990s, Nakamura attempted to connect pop culture and traditional painting, and in recent years his interest has shifted to the relationship between Japanese culture, including East Asian culture, and modern painting, with Hiragana Painting series, “Ego Mandala”, “○△□” from Shinbun Itchi series, “Modern Lovers” and “JAPANS” series are amongst the new initiatives.

 

Chris Berens completed his illustration studies at the Academy of Art & Design in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, the Netherlands in 1999. Berens paints details in fine brush and ink on small pieces of paper, then attaches another piece of paper and paints over and over again, which causes him to suffer from tendonitis, and yet he is elaborately able to construct the entirety of his work. Berens’s hand-painting technique makes imaginary landscapes come to life, and his unique nostalgic expression aims for out-of-focus and lens distortion effects supported by the high level of concentration. Berens’s portraits, which also show the influence of Rembrandt and Johannes Vermeer, are like a subtle and profound alien world, where light and shadow intersect beyond time. Meanwhile, he cites the belief in spirits and fantasy in traditional Japanese culture as one of his inspirations.

 

Hebru Brantley was born in Chicago and currently lives and works in Los Angeles. Brantley creates narrative-driven work revolving around his conceptualized iconic characters which are utilized to address complex ideas around nostalgia, the mental psyche, power, and hope. Brantley says of the floral characters: “This is the idea of how flowers resemble human life. Like flowers, people and the relationships can fade away in life. The transient nature of flowers and their life span can be likened to a human life. There is beauty in all of us, and the commercialization of beauty in flowers can also be seen in humans.”