Satoshi Ohno
Prism, 2007
oil, watercolor, ink on canvas mounted on board
62 5/8 x 71 1/4 inches
Courtesy Tomio Koyama Gallery, Tokyo
photo by Shigeo Nutou
image © Satoshi Ohno

Tomio Koyama Gallery, Tokyo,
devoted their space at The Armory Show
for an installation of works by Satoshi Ohno.

Satoshi Ohno: Prism Violet

The Contemporary Museum, Makiki Heights
September 1 - November 25, 2007

The Contemporary Museum presents the first solo museum exhibition of Japanese artist, Satoshi Ohno (born 1980).  Known for his paintings and drawings, Ohno often takes a different approach and presents his works as an installation incorporating found objects and natural materials. Ohno’s installation in TCM’s Laila Twigg-Smith Gallery will include two towering mountain forms made of carpet over wooden structures. These mountains reference the volcanoes in Hawai‘i.

Elements of nature are prominent in Ohno’s work.  He grew up in Gifu Prefecture and moved to Tokyo to study at Tokyo Zokei University.  During the seven years he lived in Tokyo, Ohno made infrequent forays outside the city into natural settings that made him conscious of the different physical and emotional reactions we experience in each environment. “I felt as if I were melting into nature and that my footing on the ground gave me a sensation linked to an inner feeling that I did not experience in the city… I realized that my footing on concrete was absolutely devoid of those feelings I had in nature.” Images of cedar trees recur in Ohno’s paintings and drawings, further symbolizing the artist’s desire to be connected to nature. Ohno even likens the images of the trees in his work to a kind of self-portraiture.

The inspiration for Ohno’s TCM installation, Prism Violet, came from a simple observation: the attraction of insects to light in the darkness of night.  It’s an instinctive, compulsive behavior that in consequence may perish from heat or become the victims of waiting predators that gather near light sources. Ohno notes that humans are also drawn to light – specifically to the light refractive qualities of prisms and the sparkle of diamonds, which in their man-made faceted forms are like prisms.  Prisms bend and separate light into color spectrums, and Ohno sees viewers’ experience of his installations functioning in a similar way. As people move in and through his environments they see and experience things from different perspectives. The experience is dynamic, ever changing, as positions and relationships to objects change. Ohno wants viewers to sense physical and emotional shifts as they circulate among and within his works, just as he experienced the effects of time spent in the urban confines of Tokyo streets or the rustic openness of forest paths.

James Jensen
Associate Director/Chief Curator

Satoshi Ohno: Prism Violet is endorsed by the Consulate General of Japan in Honolulu and is organized by The Contemporary Museum.