Oscar Oiwa and TODO : Taipei Dangdai 2023

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Theme：Light and Dark

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Oscar Oiwa once said “There would be no light without the dark”
(Oscar Oiwa, “The Love story of Light and Dark” Art & ist, Tokyo, Gendaikikakushitsu Publishers, 2000, p. 28

The world always had the darkness hiding behind the bright eras. Human beings are not the species who can live in a peace. From greed, from needs, from the enemy, for protecting, humans always fight for and from something. Even it looks peaceful, there is always a darkness inside it. However, that dark side is making the world shines brighter.
We would like to introduce two artists who depict the light and the darkness through art.
Oscar Oiwa, the painter and Ramon Todo, the sculptor.
This time Art Front Gallery would like to present two of them for the Taipei Dangdai Art Fair.

Both are naturally Japanese but experiencing the other side of the world. Oscar was born in Brazil with Japanese parents, yet moved to Japan to London to New York. On the other hand, Todo was born in Japan and moved to German to study art, and now he is back in Japan.
Both uses the light as a medium and hide the dark side on the artworks. The light always has been with the art in the history. From Caravaggio to Monet. And now, these two contemporary artists are expressing their stories via the light. Todo expresses lights with sculpture whereas Oscar presents lights with paintings.
While using the color of nature, they both are hiding the messages behind the light.
However, there is one different aspect. Oscar is the one who warns the darkness behind the light, and Todo is the one who finds the darkness by lighting the problem in the human world.

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Oscar Oiwa

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Reference Artworks “Light Rabbit (night and day view)” 2023 / Exhibited in Taiwan Lantern Festival in Taipei (Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall Station) / Ended exhibition

Oscar is a Japanese-Brazilian artist based in New York currently. His solo show “Journey to the Light” is held on 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa in Japan. Oscar’s brilliant, light-filled colors and dynamic spatial structures caught a lot of attentions and beloved by the visitors. He also has been participated in international art festivals as a contemporary artist at such as Setouchi Triennale and Tsumari Triennale. His paintings show the contrast between the light and the darkness, the imagination and the real world, the nature and the industrialized city, the organic and inorganic. He paints the imagined world but somewhat recalls the actual places. However, the reason why they look abnormal, is that there is no human being exists. Although Oscar tries to convey the dark side of industrialized world of human, it is hard to find any human figure. Also, he uses bright colors to depict the light whereas he also uses blueish dark colors at the same art to present the darkness. This gives the contrast and even lead the viewers to sense more than the color such as the sounds, smell sometimes the temperature from the artworks.

This time, we will be exhibiting eight oil paintings by Oscar, four prints from his isolated life series, and four drawings from his latest works, "Shadow Cat" and "Light Rabbit". The cat in the drawings represents shadow and the rabbit represents light, a motif he always draws as a symbol of light and darkness. This rabbit motif was also presented in his work for the Taiwan Lantern Festival in Taipei last February. Since the fact Taiwan's zodiac sign for this year is also a rabbit influenced the installation of a large Rabbit balloon-like sculpture at a subway station on the main street. The abstract sphere, which reminded us of the moon and the earth, was also displayed as if it were floating together, attracting attention from the media.

Works presented in Taipei Dangdai / Drawing / 2023

Works presented in Taipei Dangdai / “Giant Octopus 2” 2016, oil on canvas, 227.0×333.0 cm

His works, as I explained on the beginning, hides some dark side, warning about the trouble happening behind. The “Giant Octopus 2” could be an example. It is created as a pair artwork with the site-specific one "The Room inside of the Room" in Ogi island at Setouchi Triennale. It depicts the calm sea of Setouchi while hiding the giant octopus in the scene. The giant octopus represents an unknown trouble hiding below, and it is giving a big contrast to a little ship crossing the calm surface of the sea without knowing what is inside.

Works presented in Taipei Dangdai, “Ogi House 1”, 2016, oil on canvas, 51.0×61.0cm

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Todo

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"Kurokura palace " (photo by Keizo Kioku / Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale 2022)

Todo is a Japanese sculptor who creates the artwork that discovers the “time” and leads the lights to lit the way into the “time” by embedding the glasses between what he had collected.
There are always stories of “Time” behind Todo’s artworks. The artist structured his style with various forms of things collected by walking on the theme of "uniqueness of the place.” The most representative artworks would be the cutting stone artworks from historical sites in various countries around the world, with polishing and embedding glass between them. Todo’s works, which is a combination of what he felt about Western European civilization during his staying at Düsseldorf for more than 10 years, and of Japanese sense of beauty, is popular both in Japan and around the world.
In 2022, the artist also participated in the Echigo-Tsumari Art Festival, where he created a work using the old, empty house itself left behind in the village of Kurokura, deep in the mountains of Tokamachi, Niigata Prefecture. Around the same time, he also exhibited a work at the Collection of the Echigo tsumari Art Triennale at the Isobe Yukihisa Memorial Kiyotsu Soko Museum, which attracted attention for the beauty of his work. This large-scale work will also be exhibited in Taiwan.

Works presented in Taipei Dangdai “dtk 268204”, 2022, Stone of Date-Kan and Layered glass, 50.0×47.0×45.0cm (photo by Keizo Kioku / Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale 2022)

Works presented in Taipei Dangdai “Brick Block”, 2021, brick and layered glass, 43.3×12.0×20.4cm

Works presented in Taipei Dangdai “Taiwan Brick TR01”, 2021, Brick and Layered glass, 5.8×23.2×11.3cm

At Taipei Dangdai 2023, Todo will present about ten sculpture works. Todo created new artworks which relates to history of Taiwan. Notable among these are the bricks made by Todo for this art fair. The bricks, which come in two types, one with TR inscribed in the centre and the other with the letter S, can still be seen today in the town's old brick buildings. The bricks with the letter S, which came from Samuel & Samuel Company, were imported from Britain before 1918. The TR bricks, on the other hand, were made by the Taiwan Brick Corporation, and are a product of the past history of Japanese domination of Taiwan after the Sino-Japanese War. This brick construction was used in many historical buildings throughout Taiwan from the early 20th century to the end of the Second World War, and can still be seen today. By using this distinctive material and focusing on the history of this place, Todo reaffirms this fact through the medium of art. This will guide the viewers to face the fact by means of the art. Via art, he plays the role of the founder who discovers the shades behind the bright side, and reminds them by creating the artworks. The viewers will be attracted by the light of glasses from Todo’s works, but they will find the message and feel the history scene which is hidden at the bright side by the artist as he has been before, and as he has created those messages in his current solo exhibition at Art Front Gallery. On his current solo exhibition, “Chikuho-Coal”Todo picked up the wasted coal from the street at Chikuhou area where the coal mining was famous for supporting the modernization of Japan. Behind the shining modernization era, the people living there, even the kids tried to collect the wasted coal to gain a pocket money, and a lot of people died at the coal mine. Todo found the dark side of the history scene and bringing it to the viewer to find the story behind it.

Todo's solo exhibition "Chikuho-Coal" 2020 Interviews video Ended Exhibition

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Collaboration of these two artists will more meaningful to be presented at this art fair at Taiwan where the rapid development with culture and history behind like a contrast shown at Todo’s and Oiwa’s artworks. We hope the visitors to Taipei Dangdai would enjoy our exhibitions.