Galleries Section
ART OSAKA 2025
Yoshimasa Tsuchiya
Fukuo Tanaka
Kengo Nakamura
Tilt
Trav
Gary Baseman
Nicolas Buffe
Aya Cagiu
MEGUMI OGITA GALLERY is pleased to announce its participation in ART OSAKA 2025 Galleries Section. In connection with the current group exhibition “Shapes”, we will feature a wide range of artists from Japan and abroad who are dedicated to the shapes at the art fair. Yoshimasa Tsuchiya’s wood carving combines traditional techniques with innovative expression; Fukuo Tanaka’s delicate and profound glass works; Kengo Nakamura’s Japanese paintings, which reconstruct hiragana words in a painterly manner; wall paintings by French graffiti artist Tilt, who contains the impermanence and chaos of the city; Typo Architecture paintings by Los Angeles artist Trav; Gary Baseman’s paintings that celebrate the beauty of the bittersweetness of life; French artist Nicolas Buffe’s paintings and sculptures that blend Western classical art with Japanese popular culture.
Dates
June 6-8, 2025
Preview for VIPs: June 6, 1-3pm *VIP only
Preview: June 6, 3-7pm *VIP, Invitee and Press only
Open to the Public: June 7, 11am-7pm, June 8, 11am-5pm
Osaka City Central Public Hall 3F
Booth C-10 MEGUMI OGITA GALLERY
1-1-27 Nakanoshima Kita-ku Osaka 530-0005 JAPAN
Yoshimasa Tsuchiya
Baku
2025
47 x 67 x 23 cm
Painted camphor wood, borosilicate glass by Fukuo Tanaka
Yoshimasa Tsuchiya was born in 1977, studied sculpture at Tokyo University of the Arts, and completed PhD, Sculpture Conservation at the graduate school in 2007. Drawing on his experience with ancient sculptures during his graduate studies, Tsuchiya has challenged himself to combine traditional techniques with innovative expressions. He is currently holding a solo exhibition “Yoshimasa Tsuchiya - Beyond the Tranquility” at Toyama Prefectural Museum of Art and Design (until June 15, 2025), further solidifying his popularity and acclaim both in Japan and abroad. Tsuchiya has established a unique painting method whereby the inner pale colors faintly appear from the surface of wood carving. He also uses a technique similar to that for Buddhist statues, inserting crystal or glass eyes from inside the head, creating works with a mystical look. Tsuchiya’s motifs are symbolic animal figures, which embody thoughts with the form of living creatures.
Fukuo Tanaka
Oni-chan Flower
2025
4.8 x 4.3 x 4 cm
Borosilicate glass, gold, silver
Fukuo Tanaka graduated from a glass art school and has created works with high-transparency, heat-resistant borosilicate glass. Tanaka has been in charge of the glass eyes of Yoshimasa Tsuchiya’s wood carvings, and also created other glass parts for the first time at Tsuchiya’s solo exhibition in 2024. After years of exploring glass, Tanaka uses an advanced technique called “inside-out” to produce delicate works. Pieces of glass on a test tube-shaped glass are heated with a burner, creating various patterns as they melt inside, simultaneously forming a microcosm. The unique colors are created by heating colored glass and metals such as evaporated gold and silver, and combining them by chemical reaction. His works evoke the beauty in nature, such as leaf veins or snowflakes, which exist according to natural laws.
Kengo Nakamura
Umami Components
2024-2025
38 x 45.5 cm
Mineral pigment, pigment and acrylic on Japanese paper mounted on wood panel (framed)
Kengo Nakamura studied Japanese painting at Tama Art University and its graduate school. He creates unique paintings with motifs that represent contemporary society, such as emoticons in emails, speech balloons from manga, and character silhouettes. As his reputation grew abroad, Nakamura held his first solo exhibition in Taiwan at AKI Gallery in 2021, and also exhibited in “Scenery in Mock-up” at the Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts in Taipei. Additionally, he held his second solo exhibition “Kengo Nakamura’s Contemporary Japanese-Style Painting” at AKI Gallery in 2024. Nakamura attempted to connect pop culture and traditional painting in the 1990s, 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 among the new initiatives.
Tilt
Sans titre (AG19)
2024
30 x 24 cm
Mixed media on plasterboard
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Tilt is a graffiti artist from Toulouse, France. He encountered the graffiti movement in the 1980s and first painted his tag on a skateboard ramp in 1988. Tilt’s works depict the transience, chaos, and traces of gestures in urban environment through powerful colors and forms, and his graffiti legacy functions to evoke former underground expressions and memories. Tilt creates a large work on the wall with spray paint and other materials, then divides it into individual pieces to emphasize the partial nature of the whole. The realism and scale of his work, as if it had been cut directly from the wall, attracts many viewers.
Trav
Braced in time
2025
50.8 x 50.8 cm
Acrylic on wood panel
Trav is a contemporary artist based in Los Angeles, California. Drawn to graffiti as an escape from social norms, he eventually transitioned from street art to murals, and further evolved his work into pieces that critique consumerism and digital transformation through his own narrative. Having navigated both street culture and the formal art world, Trav explores themes of rebellion, resilience, and transformation, expressing the freedom he has found in a life driven by creativity, based on his raw personal history. Alongside these activities, he also contributes to community through large-scale public projects. Trav’s “Typo Architecture” painting series boldly merges graffiti letters, originating from tags on walls and trains, with the architectural structures that serve as their supports, and putting them onto canvas, proving his philosophy that values creativity and authenticity.
Gary Baseman
Disko Jockey
2023
40.6 x 50.8 cm
Acrylic on canvas
Disko Jockey shows the rabbit Disko riding Manny Moa, a character that symbolizes those loved and lost, from Baseman’s series Memento Moa (2022/2023). Disko holds onto reins made of Forget-Me-Not flowers that symbolize remembrance. The moa bird represents a past long gone, and yet this image evokes a playful moment, suggesting how to ride and enjoy and appreciate the spirit of our past, and those who are gone.
Gary Baseman is an interdisciplinary artist who investigates history, heritage, and the human condition (especially love, longing, and loss). Through unique iconography and fantastical visual narratives that celebrate “the beauty of the bittersweetness of life,” his work brings together the worlds of popular culture and fine art. Baseman (b. 1960) was born and raised in Los Angeles, California when lifestyles dramatically shifted and politics and popular culture seeped into the home. Baseman transforms everyday observations and experiences into art that includes drawing, painting, photography, video, installation art, performance, as well as fashion, toy design and social media.
Nicolas Buffe
Cupid, Cartouche with Wings I
2025
42 x 43 x 3.5 cm
Plywood, paint, oil based chalk, varnish
Cupid’s features, wings and hearts, and the frame with the tail of a feline beast, bring the overall structure together.
Nicolas Buffe was born in Paris, France in 1978 and graduated from École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris. He then completed his PhD at Tokyo University of the Arts in 2014. Buffe creates a multifaceted and comprehensive world that mixes his academic knowledge and popular culture, from classical European literature to Japanese and American subculture. Influenced by Japanese popular culture in France in the 1980s and 1990s, Buffe developed his passion for anime, tokusatsu, manga and video games. Later, he created works with references to the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the Baroque through his university studies. Buffe’s work has been exhibited at La Maison Rouge, Paris (2007), the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (2008), Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris (2010), a solo exhibition at the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (2014), K11 Hong-Kong (2017-18), Musée de Cluny, Paris (2018-19).