MEGUMI OGITA GALLERY is pleased to announce Tomokazu Hiroe’s online exclusive solo exhibition “Lonely park Ⅱ” on Artsy. Born in Tokyo in 1976, he studied at Musashino Art University in Japan, Department of Painting and the Beaux-Arts de Paris, France. Having studied in Paris and experienced the depth of Western painting, whilst enjoying the spirituality through Japanese painting and anime from textbooks and television, he has found novelty of painting in the fusion of Japanese flatness and Western three-dimensionality.

 

Hiroe painstakingly prepares the groundwork using the second Flanders painting technique in the 17th century, the same as Peter Paul Rubens, and paints motifs on the coat of light grey and yellow ochre. The scenes of works are seemingly tragic - stuffed animals around a campfire, a lion leaping over rings of flames - but depending on how you look at it, it also has the aspect of still life painting that is simply arranged. They have multitude of contexts with lines and patterns drawn in tense red and depictions of familiar toys.

 

The works are finished by covering them with industrial vinyl instead of varnish, which gives them a uniform photographic sheen and suggests new form of expression, as well as relationships between art and readymade that continues from Marcel Duchamp. The use of chemical reaction between vinyl and chalk ground, as harmony of old and new, nature and chemistry, is extremely modern and original.

 

In this exhibition, Hiroe demonstrates a contemporary view of Japan through the sophisticated forms and flames of "Hell Scroll" (12th century), which have conveyed beauty as well as fear. In today's society, various stresses and anxieties cover our lives. His works lightly depict such negative emotions that everyone has, and give hope to the viewers. He believes that symbiosis, rather than hostility or division between different cultures, is a new possibility.