Oscar Oiwa: My Ring

A Story about a River, or beyond Time and Place

Yukie Kamiya, Art Critic

“Could we not claim, said Austerlitz, that time itself has been non-concurrent over the centuries and the millennia? It is not so long ago, after all, that it began spreading out over everything. And is not human life in many parts of the earth governed to this day less by time than by the weather, and thus by an unquantifiable dimension which disregards linear regularity, does not progress constantly forward but moves in eddies, is marked by episodes of congestion and irruption, recurs in ever-changing form, and evolves in no one knows what direction?”

W.G. Sebald, Austerlitz

Peace and War (collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo), a major pair of works by Oscar Oiwa, was painted in 2001, the year before he left Japan. Oiwa was then living in Kitasenju, Tokyo, and in these paintings he sought to capture the pre-war and wartime appearance of that downtown district in daylight and night time. The former is depected it peaceful and sunlit, the Arakawa River visible in the distance. But the night view shows the area during an air raid, overwhelmed with smoke and sparks. An angry profile stands out, like the spirit of a sacred tree. Oiwa then moved to New York, arriving after the city witnessed the ravage of 9/11. He has been based in New York ever since, having a studio across the East River from Manhattan. Here he starts working daily at 9am or earlier, except for when the Covid lockdown made commuting impossible. This studio is the centre of his creative activity, where he links memories and imaginations.

Oiwa’s new series combines elements from previous work created by him at different times and in different places. This he has reorganized into tableaux, as collages, or patchworks of temporal and spatial fragments. Through this flows a meandering jet-black stream, traversing the picture plane. The work runs from one temporal point to another, from this side of a place, to the other. A familiar scene of a New York subway station comes into view, and an olde-worlde, long-gone itinerant ramen stand. A robot in a bathtub humorously quotes from his 2008 Bathtub Man, as if AI could also enjoy a good soak. Yet that scene evokes fuel rod pools and tanks for contaminated water in Fukushima, neither existing when the original was painted. It is just like the ravages of war which Oiwa depicted retrospectively in Peace and War, might actually foretell the tsunami that attacked that city.

The Surrealists confronted that a science and technology was heading towards war not guiding a society moving towards the ideal direction. They had imaginations and dreams at hand to attempt to deflect the insanity of reality. Their surreal imagery was a vehicle for criticism by metaphor. Oiwa paints in soft tones to render criss-crossing temporal and spatial elements, which are ambiguous memories, histories eluding firm descriptions and anticipated experiences and catastrophes moving back and forth in different times and places. Oiwa resists integrating personal history and social narrative into neat linear regularity. His restaging of his own works plays polyphony and cacophony, moving in eddies, in episodes of congestion and irruption.

Oscar Oiwa《Ring 2》2023 oil on canvas 130 x 194cm

Oscar Oiwa, 《Studio (Ring)》 2023 3D print, mixed media 20 x 30 x 30 cm

A 3D printer was used to print out a series of new flat surfaces. The artist's studio, where the viewer can look at it, is reproduced in the three-dimensional work. The artist is challenging various media depending on the purpose.

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Landscape with rivers

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Together with new works will be exhibited recent works depicting rivers.
Born in Brazil, Oscar studied architecture at the University of São Paulo and worked in Tokyo in the 1990s, pursuing both architecture and art. After moving to New York, he has continued to work on various projects while traveling between Japan、United States and Brazil. He has painted several rivers, which he says are connected to the ocean and to the world. In the second room, "Sumida River," "Pine River," and others will be exhibited.

《Sumida River》2015 oil on canvas 　111x227cm

《Light Shop 2》2018 oil on canvas 178 x 138cm

《Two Ships under the Moon light 1》2018 oil on canvas 40 x 51cm
The shadow of a boat quietly navigating a jet-black river. We hope you enjoy comparing it to the river of time flowing in the next room.

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from recent activities of Oscar Oiwa

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Oscar has been known Ogijima since the first edition of the Setouchi Triennale 2010, and has presented wall paintings and trompe l'oeil style installations. Last summer, Shigeru Ban, an architect known for his paper tube structures, built a house on a hill on Ogijima with a good view of the island and installed his work on its glass windows and sliding screens. The work depicts sea creatures, such as giant octopus, with an adopted landscape of ships coming and going in the Seto Inland Sea

Ogijima Pavilion from Setouchi Triennale 2022

The motif of giant octopus was also depicted in "Giant Octopus 2," which was included in his solo exhibition at Art Front in 2016. (It will also be shown in his solo exhibition "Journey Toward the Light" at 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa in 2019.) In addition to vivid oil paintings, he also uses composition gold leaf in some parts to express the shimmering surface of the water. This work will be exhibited at Taipei Dangdai this May.

《Giant Octopus ２》2016 oil and composition gold on canvas　h227 x 333cm

Recently, his exhibitions in Taiwan have attracted much attention.
In the summer of 2022, his first solo exhibition in Taiwan was held at Seaside Gallery in Pingtung City. In a large 360-degree encircled form divided into three areas, "Sleeping Dreams," "Darkness and Light," and "Isolation," he used marker pens to create a fantastical black and white space on the inner surface of a sphere.

Oscar Oiwa "The Dream of a Sleeping World," Pingtung Seaside Gallery, installation view

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[大岩奧斯卡：My Ring]

河川，抑或是超越時間和地點的故事——

神谷幸江（美術評論家）

「或許我們是不是可以說，」 Austerlitz說，「在過去的幾百年、幾千年裡，實際上時間並不是同步的？畢竟，時間如此擴展到各處並不是那麼久遠的事。在世界上有些地方，人們並非依循時間，而是依循天氣這種無法量化的基準來生活。 這些基準不是線性規律的，不會一直持續地向前進，而是旋轉、淤塞、爆發，不斷地以不同形式出現，往無法預測的方向演變」

-W. G. Sebald, Austerlitz

大岩奧斯卡在離開日本的前一年――2001年，畫了一對巨作《戰爭與和平》（收藏於東京都現代美術館）。當時居住在東京北千住的大岩描繪了該地區戰前和戰爭時期白天和夜晚的景色樣貌，陽光照耀下的平和小鎮日景中，可以看到荒川就在遠處；而壟罩在黑暗中的夜城則瀰漫著空襲的火花和煙霧，浮現了像是巨大樹靈一樣的憤怒面容。隔年，他搬到了剛經歷了9.11恐怖攻擊的紐約，並以其為據點。他的工作室位於跨越東河的曼哈頓另一端，每天早上固定從9點開始工作。除了無法外出的疫情期間外，這個工作室一直是大岩所有創作的基地，連結了他的記憶和幻想。

這次的一系列新作品，是從自己以前描繪了不同時間地點的創作中擷取畫面，重新組合構成的新畫作。在這些自己畫作的拼貼中，時間和空間拼凑接合，並有一条蜿蜒漆黑的河流從中穿流而過。從一個時間到另一個時間，從這個場所到那個場所。你發現最近的地鐵入口已經敞開，又發現一家一間現今已很難見到的懷舊拉麵攤佇立在那。取自《Bathtub Man》（2008年）的機器人浸泡在熱水中，除了展現了AI也會享受湯煙的幽默趣味，還讓人想起了雖然在作畫時還不存在的污水儲水槽和裝了燃料棒的水池。是的，就像是《戰爭與和平》中描繪了過往時代的戰火塵煙，也預示了往後另一個城市遭受海嘯襲擊的樣貌。

超現實主義者們目睹了科學技術的發展並沒有通向理想社會，而是導向戰爭，他們嘗試用手中的幻想、夢境和超現實世界從瘋狂的現實中逃脫，並將其作為充滿隱喻性批判的手段。大岩將模稜兩可的記憶、永遠無法確認的歷史、新發生的經歷和災難、以及這種反覆穿梭的時間和地點，用柔和的色彩描繪出來，以抗拒個人史和社會史被線性流動所限制。大岩自作的重現，成了在不同場所及時間中演奏的多聲部的樂曲，時而和諧時而不和諧，不斷地旋轉、淤塞、爆發。