TOMOKO OBANA AND TORU OTANI
2022-07-11Tomoko Obana and Toru Otani do not know each-other, however their artistic procedures are neighborly, relishing delight in cartographic compositions, found forms and in rich color; earthy to Victorian from the hands of Obana, and from Old World towards Fauve in the hands of Otani.
For her vitrine sculptures, Tomoko Obana collects vintage, industrially produced wares such as water and perfume bottles, jugs, bud vases and more. She makes a mold of these found objects by which she produces one hundred casts; ten each of ten different types of clay slip, kiln fired with various woods, amounting to one-hundred unique “ash glazed” iterations. The artist contemplates the nuances of sooty and dappled surfaces of her objects and settles on arrangements which may, in the Western canon, resemble the paintings of Giorgio Morandi, but which, for the artist, give a nod to the aesthetic disciplines of Japanese Ikebana flower arrangements or dry, rock gardens.
Opposite – Toru Otani, Game Board for a Game of Unburnable Stones and Tigers, 2015
Exhibition runs through to August 27th, 2022
Nonaka-Hill
720 N. Highland Ave.
CA 90038
Los Angeles
