Base Gallery is pleased to present "animation," a solo exhibition of works by Atsuo Ogawa.

The support medium Ogawa uses varies from paper, blackboard, glass, wood even to soap, namely, to anything on which he can write and draw lines. Ogawa creatively applies various tools such as pen, chalk and needle depending on the support medium, and surprisingly the completed image is composed of just one line.

Ogawa does not move his hand based on his intention in prospect of the resulting image. Rather, the line is involuntarily drawn leaving up to something inherent in his hand. The line that makes us feel as if we could hear the steady scratching sound sensually tells us calm and tranquil clash between his hand and support medium.

The line he draws evokes our desire to draw and depict. Along with such desire we once had, it calls back the desire for a small creation and urges us to move the hand without thinking. The cerated paper provides him with more resistive texture. Superimposed lines brought forth on pieces of paper in layers ingenerate unaccountable depth. They tempt us to move our hand more and awake something intrinsic in ourselves. The work of Ogawa reaches somewhere deep and primitive in ourselves and silently induces resonance.

The work of engraved soap presented at “Mot Annual 2010 Neo-Ornamentalism from Japanese Contemporary Art” held at Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo attracted so much attention. Ogawa has also gained opportunities to present his works overseas in the past years.

The artist statement: "Occasionally, some people kindly recommend that I create animation by letting my drawings be in motion. I wonder what they see in my round shape pattern depicted by a single line where the phenomena such as repetition and deviation occur. Given the series of process until images move, I feel slightly blinded and lost in a way. However, animation can be the sensory illusion fostered by the effect of afterimage of successive images. In other words, it is the sequence of still images. To put it plainly, they might have seen the motion in the sequence of each work lined up there, and I myself must have been dizzied by the abyss of keeping on drawing up until now, and in the future.

The elaborately manipulated image is adjusted in our brain and begins to move mellifluously. If that is the case, there should be a one and only simulacrum between one image and another that compose animation. I mean the simulacrum that is perceived in one’s own way depending on the
viewers and never sharable with somebody else. Let it replay in slow motion. One frame and another become more dependent, and the interval between them gets wider. At the same time, the gloom bridging each becomes more dense. The darkness is inserted in every interval, and our brain
depicts a self-consistent view. The ins and outs, right and left, front and back, yesterday and tomorrow, past and future…each individual transformation of viewers bridges these elements.

The present that exists here at the moment in between the superimposed images is the exclusive standpoint only you can take." - December 2012

Base Gallery
103-0025
Koura Daiichi Bldg.1F 1-1-6
Nihombashi Kayabacho Chuo-ku Tokyo
Tel: +81(0)3-5623-6655
info@basegallery.com
www.basegallery.com

Gallery Hours
From Monday to Saturday
From 11.00 am until 7.00 pm