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A temática presente nas pinturas de Oscar Oiwa não surge sem propósito, mas sim de uma infinidade de associações que podem ou não ter relação com fatos reais. Trabalhando essencialmente com tinta a óleo, o artista cria um mundo vívido e complexo repleto de acontecimentos surreais e imagens concebidas em sua mente. Seus novos trabalhos são frequentemente continuações de trabalhos antigos, e seus temas surgem de associações entre fatos diversos. A obra de Oiwa é diretamente derivada de suas experiências itinerantes: nascido no Brasil de pais japoneses, o artista oriundo de São Paulo se mudou para Tóquio, em pleno estouro da crise econômica; em seguida para Londres, onde permaneceu por um ano; e finalmente, em 2002, ao receber a Guggenheim Fellowship, se mudou para Nova York, onde atualmente vive e trabalha.

The ideas and themes present in the paintings of Oscar Oiwa do not come from thin air, they are drawn from a multitude of associations that may or may not stem from actual events. Working primarily with oil based media, the artist creates a vivid and complex world filled with unreal occurrences and images developed within the mind. New works are often continuations of old works and themes spring from the association of different facts. The works of Oiwa are directly derivative of the artist’s peripatetic experiences. Born in Brazil to Japanese parents, the artist is a native of São Paulo but moved to Tokyo, arriving just as the bubble economy burst, then London, where he spent a year, and finally, in 2002, recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, relocated to New York where he currently lives and works.

Explorando o hibridismo entre tecnologia e natureza, o artista evoca a tradição do folclore para dar vida à relação entre o orgânico e o mecânico. Instigado pela ideia de colapso, de mundos à beira da destruição, seja por fatores internos ou externos, suas pinturas são exercícios do surreal, do sublime e, paradoxalmente, do mundano. Oiwa se inspira em fatos atuais, sendo considerado um dos artistas que melhor representa os impactos da globalização. Com considerável destreza técnica, o artista pinta imagens de ruínas para produzir paisagens com tinta a óleo em grandes painéis de múltiplas telas. Seu estilo representativo é casual, e mostra influências de arte japonesa.

Exploring the hybridity of technology and nature, he evokes the tradition of folklore to give voice to the kinship between what is organic and what is mechanical. Heavily interested in the idea of collapse, of worlds at brink of destruction, either by an interior entropy or an outside force, his paintings are exercises of surrealist thought, the sublime, and, paradoxically, of the mundane. He draws inspiration for his works from current events and is deemed as one of the most accomplished artists to record the impact of globalization. With considerable technical expertise, Oiwa paints images of ruins to produce large multi-paneled oil paintings of landscapes. His representational style is casual and shows influences from Japanese art.

Oscar Oiwa nasceu em São Paulo (1965). Vive e trabalha em Nova York. Em 1995, recebeu o prêmio de residência artística do Delfina Studio Trust, em Londres, assim como prêmios de instituições como Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Asian Cultural Council e John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Seus trabalhos foram exibidos em São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Tóquio, Nova York, Pequim, Hong Kong, Paris, Barcelona, entre outras localidades. Em 1989, participou da 21ª Bienal Internacional de Arte de São Paulo (1991). Suas obras fazem parte de importantes coleções públicas, como a do National Museum of Modern Art, Tóquio; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tóquio; Phoenix Art Museum; e Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation.

Oscar Oiwa was born in 1965 in São Paulo, Brazil. He lives and works in New York City. He received artist in residence award from The Delfina Studio Trust, London in 1995; in addition to grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Asian Cultural Council and John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. He has showed his works in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Tokyo, New York, Beijing, Hong Kong, Paris, Barcelona, among other places. In 1989, he participated of the 21st International São Paulo Biennial (1991). His works are housed in public institutions such as The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; Phoenix Art Museum; and Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation

into the jungle

in to the jungle

Nas minhas pinturas aparecem muito a paisagem de muitos lugares diferen-

My paintings appear as landscapes reminiscent of various different places. Af-

tes. Depois de viajar bastante, morar em muitos lugares diferentes, conviver

ter traveling extensively, living in different places and with people of so many

com tantas pessoas de culturas diferentes, a idéia do mundo acaba ficando

different cultures, the idea of the world tends to become unified.

um só. Our world is a round planet, going from East to West, North to South. And, irÉ um planeta redondo, indo para oeste ou leste, para o norte ou para o sul,

regardless, we are always in the world... [...] in these perambulations through

sempre estamos dentro dela... […] Nessas andanças ao redor do planeta fico

different lands, I have observed how economy and politics tend to work. I see

observando como a economia e a política funciona. Acompanho produtos

products of certain companies spreading throughout the world...Information

de certas companhias que vão se espalhando pelo mundo… A informação

in real time, afforded by the internet. And, within this, I see how industrial-

em tempo real pela internet. E dentro disso, fico observando como a cultura

ized culture (cinema, music, and to an extent, contemporary art) is distrib-

industrializada (cinema, musica, etc e em parte arte contemporânea) é dis-

uted through the world, almost always at the side of the economically strong,

tribuída pelo mundo, quase sempre do lado economicamente mais forte para

trickling to the side of the economically weaker.

o lado economicamente mais fraca.

Chalana 3 2015 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 111 x 227 cm

Chalana (Small) 2012 óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 61 x 91.5cm coleção particular/private collection Tokyo Green River 2007 óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 227 x 333 cm coleção particular/private collection Dubai

Five nests 2012 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 227 x 555 cm

Nest (big & small) 2009 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 227 x 555 cm coleção particular/private collection, são paulo

The dream of the sleeping world 2009 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 227 x 333 cm

o realismo mágico de oscar oiwa jacopo crivelli visconti

These fragments I have shored against my ruins... T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land, 1922

Alice no País das Maravilhas, o clássico de 1865 de Lewis Carroll, está repleto de situações e personagens fantásticos: gatos falantes e risonhos, chapeleiros malucos, constantes transformações, portas que conduzem para outros mundos... Mergulhados, como Alice, neste universo paralelo, não temos dificuldade em considerar tudo o que acontece coerente e plausível, em compartilhar a aflição do coelho perenemente atrasado, ou em entender a psicologia dos outros personagens. A única exceção sejam, talvez, os episódios em que a temível Rainha de Copas, autoritária, irascível e despótica, aterroriza seus criados, isto é, uma multidão de cartas de baralho, com a constante ameaça de cortar-lhes a cabeça. O que faz dessas cenas a apoteose do surrealismo, num livro que já é plenamente surreal, não é, naturalmente, o mau caráter da Rainha, mas a bi-dimensionalidade dos criados: as cartas não têm volume, poder-se-ia pensar, para abrigar sentimentos. Sua bi-dimensionalidade, contudo, parece ser mais profunda da que conhecemos, e que obedece às leis da nossa realidade: trata-se, isto é, de uma bi-dimensionalidade apenas aparente, como a das telas de cinema, das fotografias e, obviamente, da pintura. Day and Night 2006 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 227 x 333 cm É possível pensar também em outra explicação, talvez mais simples: a bidimensionalidade não existe, tudo é apenas uma questão de escala. Na instalação Gift of Hope (2001), realizada em ocasião da exposição homônima no Museum of Contemporary Art in Tóquio, Oscar Oiwa, artista constantemente engajado na criação de universos imaginários e fantásticos (talvez não muito distantes do próprio País das Maravilhas de Alice), pintou o chão e instalou um teto de tecido com uma grande escrita Postcard (Cartão Postal), e um quadrado onde colocar um selo imaginário. Desta forma, quem entrasse na sala teria a impressão de ter adentrado um cartão postal: de estar, mais precisamente, no espaço infinitesimal, quase inconcebível, entre a frente e o verso. Dessa posição privilegiada, os visitantes podiam observar os quadros pendurados nas paredes, mas também, certamente, parar para refletir sobre o lugar onde se encontravam, tanto num sentido físico quanto metafísico. A idéia do cartão postal “penetrável” é perfeitamente plausível no universo de Oiwa, em cujas pinturas nos deparamos constantemente com mudanças

de escala e situações inusitadas: lulas gigantes pairando entre escombros de prédios; túneis que começam no Rio de Janeiro e acabam em Tóquio; flores voadoras que transformam Manhattan num enorme jardim; lojas que vendem chamas de vários tamanhos; um escritório para liliputianos instalado no meio de um jardim de cactos, etc. Algumas telas, como Reflex (2005) ou Day & Night (2006), são ainda divididas bastante nitidamente em duas metades quase especulares, de maneira que, viradas de ponta cabeça, continuariam sendo perfeitamente compreensíveis, exatamente como uma carta de baralho... Apesar desse caráter fantástico, porém, as telas conseguem criar uma narrativa plausível, construir um universo regido por regras certamente distintas das que regulam o mundo que habitamos, mas que, contudo, nos parecem coerentes.

Esta familiaridade quase inexplicável que sentimos na frente das telas surreais de Oiwa, a sensação de estar vendo algo que conhecemos, talvez se deva ao processo de construção das cenas representadas nas obras, descrito pelo próprio artista no texto Gardening. Elementos oriundos das fontes mais diversas, como as manchetes do New York Times sobre atentados terroristas, a visão de uma pomba morta na neve, ou as lojas de Chinatown, são os detonadores que acionam a fabulação de Oiwa. Praticamente tudo o que ele vê, ouve ou lê, pode levar sua fértil e rizomática imaginação a começar uma história, pode constituir, isto é, o mote para mais uma narrativa que irá confluir para a tela. Narrativa, porém, sempre fragmentária, que não aspira a se tornar autêntico relato, preferindo funcionar de estimulo, como se Oiwa quisesse apenas restituir ao mundo os elementos desconexos que o inspiraram, sem nenhuma elaboração, preservando seu caráter de pura sugestão. Cada quadro, poder-se-ia dizer, começa a ser pintado inúmeras vezes ao longo do dia, e acaba contendo uma infinidade de caminhos em potência, aponta para inúmeras histórias possíveis, das quais vemos apenas fragmentos que cabe a nós reunir, interpretar e ressignificar. Nas entrevistas e nos textos em que descreve o seu trabalho, aliás, o artista insiste na leitura metafórica, quase literal, dos inúmeros personagens, objetos e paisagens que compõem suas pinturas, como se a passagem da realidade para a ficção da pintura pudesse não deixar rastros. Mas a que Oiwa cumpre, na verdade, é uma transformação ontológica: todos os elementos que ele retira da realidade (diretamente, ou com a intermediação de jornais, revistas, cinema ou da própria produção artística) passam a funcionar também em outro registro: o registro da fábula. Ou seja, além de continuar remetendo à realidade de onde são extraídos, e da qual constituem uma alegoria bastante transparente, as coisas passam a integrar e compor a realidade peculiar de Oiwa, e é dessa relação aparentemente conflituosa e certamente instável que brota, talvez, o grande fascínio de seus quadros. Tomem-se, por exemplo, as manchas de óleo que flutuam na superfície do mar (ou seria talvez um lago?) no quadro Oil Ghosts (2007): apesar de remeter claramente às silhuetas dos Estados Unidos e das outras nações que lutam pelo predomínio no comércio do petróleo, os olhos conferem-lhe uma aparência biomórfica, que as torna personagens típicas do universo de Oiwa. Esta convivência da representação naturalista com o registro fabulosofantástico é um dos aspectos mais marcantes e característicos dos quadros de Oiwa, e permite aproximar a sua produção da tradição literária, brasileira e latino-americana em geral, do realismo mágico. O universo de autores como Jorge Amado, Alejo Carpentier, Isabel Allende ou Gabriel García-Marquez, para citar apenas alguns entre os mais conhecidos, é caracterizado por uma oscilação análoga, isto é, pela convivência de descrições meticulosamente naturalistas, não raramente profundamente engajadas do ponto de vista sócio-político, e páginas de literatura fantástica, repletas de fantasmas, milagres e metamorfoses. Aqui, o possível e o impossível parecem conviver,

o absurdo e o inexplicável tornam-se plausíveis, o fabuloso vira natural e até esperado, exatamente como acontece nos quadros de Oiwa. As flores gigantes, ao mesmo tempo alegres e ameaçadoras, que pairam sobre Nova York em Gardening (Manhattan) (2003), ou a neve preta que desce sobre São Paulo em Black Snow (1997), são eventos bíblicos, majestosos, comparáveis à insônia e à amnésia que afligem os habitantes de Macondo em Cem anos de solidão, ou, mais tangivelmente, aos milhares de bilhetes, com os nomes de todas as coisas, que eles vão colando em tudo, numa tentativa desesperada de arrestar a perda de qualquer memória. A aproximação da pintura de Oiwa a um gênero literário tipicamente latinoamericano, contudo, não deve sugerir uma leitura redutiva ou regionalista da sua obra. Pelo contrário: entre os artistas brasileiros de sua geração, Oiwa é certamente um dos que mais rápida e profundamente se emanciparam do contexto local, tendo vivido grande parte da sua vida, e construído sua carreira, entre Europa, Japão e Estados Unidos. Muito além do contexto latino-

Nest (minka) 2009 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas 227 x 222 cm -- coleção particular/private collection, são paulo

Reflex 2005 óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 227 x 444 cm coleção particular/private collection, Lima, Peru

americano, a simultaneidade de registros distintos, assim como a riqueza inesgotável de fontes e referências detectáveis nos seus quadros, comprovam o caráter eminentemente globalizado e pós-moderno da pintura de Oiwa, se com isso entendemos seu ser em constante transformação, permeável aos estímulos mais diversos, contraditória e irônica. Nas palavras de David Harvey, que sobre a condição pós-moderna escreveu um livro fundamental, na literatura pós-moderna a fronteira entre ficção e ficção científica sofreu uma real dissolução. Nos quadros de Oiwa presenciamos a dissolução, análoga, de qualquer distinção entre registros e gêneros: caricaturais e poéticos, engajados e alegóricos, divertidos e trágicos, eles escapam qualquer definição pré-concebida, ou melhor, englobam-nas todas em algo novo, dificilmente definível e irreduzível a qualquer sistema maior ou mais abrangente (o que reafirma seu caráter pós-moderno, se, como dizia Lyotard, o pós-moderno é simplesmente incredulidade diante das metanarrativas). Esta condição é exemplificada perfeitamente pelos quadros da série Ninhos (começada em 2009), que Oiwa apresenta agora nesta sua terceira exposição na Galeria Thomas Cohn. Os hibiscos vermelhos, carnosos e sensuais, que afloram de uma vegetação exuberante, apontam para uma serenidade que, ao que parece, nada poderá turbar. Até hoje, quando pintava a natureza o artista incluía, geralmente, algum elemento inquietante, assustador, algo assim como a sem*nte de uma ruína que se preanunciava inevitável. Esse germe de perdição, se por um lado remetia ao motivo tradicional do memento mori, era também sintoma de uma preocupação ecológica evidente, que

constitui, aliás, um dos grandes temas que perpassam toda a obra de Oiwa. Significativamente, ao comparar a sua representação da natureza à famosa série dos Lírios de Monet, Marilyn A. Zeitlin insistia na contraposição entre a visão idílica do artista francês e a ameaçadora do brasileiro: Monet’s landscape is serene to the same extent that Oiwa’s, just as beautiful, is disturbing. Na nova série, contudo, algo parece ter mudado: a visão da natureza não traz consigo nenhum presságio de desastre. Até o tema, recorrente, da casa escancarada e desagregada, com seus cômodos diminutos e espalhados, não transmite a sensação de fragilidade e desamparo que emergia em obras anteriores, antes convida a uma entrega total, a uma osmose da construção com a natureza, cuja superioridade parece agora incontestável e inabalável. Receio que seria excessivamente otimista ler nesta virada uma mensagem de esperança no que diz respeito ao futuro do mundo, mas talvez não seja demais querer ler nestes ninhos uma confissão bem-humorada: que, afinal, viver de fragmentos não é tão assustador assim.

Jacopo Crivelli Visconti *escrita em ocasião da exposição de Oscar Oiwa na antiga Galeria Thomas Cohn (São Paulo, 2009)

oiwa in wonderland jacopo crivelli visconti

These fragments I have shored against my ruins... T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land, 1922

Black Snow 1997 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas 227 x 333 cm -- coleção particular/private collection, Paris

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the 1865 classic by Lewis Carroll, is replete with fantastic situations and characters: grinning and vanishing cats, mad hatters, ongoing transformations, and doors leading to other realms... Plunged as we are in this parallel universe, like Alice, we have no difficulty viewing everything as coherent and plausible, sharing the anxious excitement of the hasty white rabbit, or understanding the psychological makeup of the other characters. The only exception is, perhaps, the episodes in which the dreadful, authoritarian, irascible and despotic Queen of Hearts terrorizes her attendants – all of them playing cards –, constantly threatening to have their heads cut off. Most certainly, what makes these scenes into an apotheosis of surrealism in a totally surreal book is not the Queen’s ill nature, but the two-dimensionality of her staff: after all, playing cards have no bulk to contain feelings, we might think. However, the cards’ twodimensionality seems deeper than the one we know, and which obeys the laws of our reality. In other words, it is an apparent two-dimensionality, like that of movie screens, photographic supports, and painting canvases, of course. We might also think of another explanation that is just as plausible and perhaps even simpler: two-dimensionality does not exist, everything is merely a matter of scale. In the installation Gift of Hope (2001), shown at the namesake exhibition held at the Museum of Contemporary Art, in Tokyo, Oscar Oiwa -- an artist constantly engaged in the creation of imaginary and fantastic realms (perhaps not too distant from Alice’s Wonderland itself), painted the floor and put up a ceiling made of fabric with the word Postcard written in large characters, and finally designated a place on it for pasting an imaginary stamp. In this way, anyone coming into the room would have the impression of having entered a postcard: in other words, of being precisely in the nearly inconceivable, infinitesimal space between front and back. From this privileged standpoint, visitors could observe the paintings hanging on the walls, while at the same time, most certainly, stopping to ponder the place they were in, both in the physical and the metaphysical

sense. The idea of a “penetrable” postcard is perfectly plausible in Oiwa’s wonderland, in which paintings often feature different scales and bizarre situations: giant squids hovering over devastated buildings; tunnels linking Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo; flying flowers that transform Manhattan into a huge garden; shops selling fire flames in assorted sizes; a Lilliputian office facility installed in a cactus garden, and so on. Some of Oiwa’s canvases, as for example Reflex (2005) or Day & Night (2006), are clearly divided into nearly mirrored halves, in such a way that when turned upside down they still make perfect sense – exactly like a playing card… Notwithstanding this fantastic character, however, the canvases successfully create a plausible narrative, building a realm governed by rules that are different than those effective in the world we live in, but that even so seem coherent to us. Our almost inexplicable familiarity with Oiwa’s surreal canvases, i.e., the sense of déjà vu, possibly derives from the process used in building the scenes, which the artist himself describes in the essay titled Gardening . Elements taken from varied sources such as The New York Times front-page headlines about terrorist attacks, a dead dove in the snow, or the Chinatown shops are detonators of Oiwa’s fabulation. Practically everything the artist sees, hears, or reads may lead his fertile and rhizomic imagination to begin a story. In other words, it may provide him the leading thread for one more narrative to be rendered on canvas. This narrative, however, is always fragmented; it does not aspire to become an authentic account, it prefers to function as stimulus, as if the artist merely wished to give back to the world, without any elaboration and preserving their character of mere suggestion, the nonsensical elements that have inspired him. We could say that Oiwa begins to paint each of his pictures countless times in a same day, and as a consequence he comes up with infinite potential courses. He points to numerous possible stories, of which we only see the fragments we manage to put together, interpret, and resignify. In the interviews he gives and the writings in which he describes his work, the artist stresses the metaphorical and nearly literal reading of the countless characters, objects, and scenes that compose his pictures, as if the passage from reality to fictional painting could take place without leaving traces. However, Oiwa performs an ontological transformation: all the elements that he takes from reality (whether directly or indirectly, i.e. via newspapers, magazines, film, or other artists’ works) take on the function of a fable element. In other words, in addition to still referring to the reality from which they are extracted, and which they integrate as a transparent allegory, things also integrate and compose Oiwa’s particular reality. It is perhaps in this apparently conflicting and certainly unstable relationship that the great attraction of his pictures resides. See, for example, the oil blotches floating on the sea surface (Would that be a lake, perhaps?) in the painting Oil Ghosts (2007): despite making a clear allusion to the country maps of the United States and other oil producing countries that struggle over the world market, the

Beautiful Kaya House 2009 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 130 x 194 cm

attendance of eyes in these blotches gives them a biomorphic appearance and makes them into typical characters of Oiwa’s universe. The coexistence of naturalist representation and the fabled-fantastic datum is one of the most remarkable and typical aspects of Oiwa’s paintings -- one that approximates his production to the Brazilian and Latin American literary tradition, of so-called magic realism. The realm of authors such as Jorge Amado, Alejo Carpentier, Isabel Allende or Gabriel García-Marquez, to mention only a few among the most celebrated, is characterized by a similar oscillation, that is to say, by the coexistence of meticulously naturalist descriptions, often deeply engaged from the social political standpoint, and passages of fantastic literature, replete with ghosts, miracles, and metamorphoses. Here, the possible and the impossible seem to live in harmony; the absurd and the inexplicable become plausible, and the fabulous becomes natural and even expected, exactly like in Oiwa’s pictures. The joyful and yet menacing giant flowers that hover over New York in Gardening (Manhattan) (2003), or the black snow that falls over São Paulo in Black Snow (1997) are majestic, biblical events comparable to the insomnia and amnesia that af-

Mamona War 2004 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 227 x 333 cm

flict the inhabitants of Macondo in Garcia Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude; or, even more tangible, to thousands of notes scribbled with names of all things, that they post everywhere in their desperate attempt to halt memory loss. The kinship of Oiwa’s painting with a typically Latin American literary genre should not suggest a reductionist or regionalist reading of his oeuvre. On the contrary, among the Brazilian artists of his generation, Oscar Oiwa is certainly one who most rapidly and effectively became independent from the local context, having lived the better part of his life and built his artistic career between Europe, Japan, and the United States. Way beyond the Latin American context, the simultaneity of distinctive records in combination with the inexhaustible richness of sources and references attest to the eminently globalized and postmodern character of Oiwa’s painting -- provided we view him as an artist undergoing constant, contradictory and ironical transformation, permeable to the most diverse stimuli. In the words of David Harvey, who wrote a fundamental book on the condition of postmodernity, in postmodern literature “the boundary between fiction and science fiction has [...] effectively dissolved” . In Oiwa’s pictures we observe a similar dissolution of any distinction between records and genres: burlesque and poetic, engaged and allegorical, fun and tragic, they elude any preconceived definition, or even combine them all into something new, which is hardly definable and reducible to a greater or more comprehensive system (a fact that asserts its postmodern character given that, in Lyotard’s definition, the postmodern is simply “incredulity towards meta-narratives.” ).

This condition is perfectly exemplified by the works of the series Ninhos [Nests] (begun in 2009) that Oiwa now presents in his fifth solo exhibition at Galeria Thomas Cohn, in São Paulo. Fleshy and sensuous, the red hibiscuses emerging from the lush vegetation point to a serenity that, as it seems, nothing can disturb. Up to now, when painting nature, the artist usually included some disquieting, frightening element meant to function as the seed of a foreseen, unavoidable wreck. If on the one hand this germ of decay brought to mind the traditional motif of the memento mori, on the other hand it was also a symptom of a clear environmental concern that, by the way, is one of the main themes in Oiwa’s oeuvre. For good reason, when comparing Oiwa’s representation of nature and Monet’s famous Water Lillies series, Marilyn A. Zeitlin made a point of comparing the French artist’s idyllic vision and the menacing outlook of the Brazilian painter: “Monet’s landscape is serene to the same extent that Oiwa’s, just as beautiful, is disturbing.” In the new series, however, something seems to have changed, as the landscape rendition is not marked by any ominous sign of disaster. Even the recurrent theme of a wide open and disaggregated house, with tiny rooms scattered around, does not convey the sense of fragility and helplessness that emerged from previous paintings. Rather, it encourages a total deliverance, an osmosis relating construction and the environment, the superiority of which now seems indisputable and steadfast. I am afraid that reading, in this turnaround, a message of hope concerning the future of the world would be far too optimistic, but perhaps there’s nothing wrong with wanting to read in these nests the goodhumored confession: living off fragments is not all that frightening, after all.

Jacopo Crivelli Visconti * written on occasion of Oscar Oiwa’s exhibition at Galeria Thomas Cohn (São Paulo, 2009)

Tunnel (Rio) 2007 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 227 x 444 cm

Flower Garden 2004 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 227 x 555 cm -- coleção/collection Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art

Gardening (Way to Peace) 2003 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 227 x 444 cm -- coleção/collection The National Museum of Modern Art Tokyo

Peace and War (Peace) 2001 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 227 x 444 cm -- coleção/collection Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo

Peace and War (War) 2001 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 227 x 444 cm -- coleção/collection Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo

from Japanese art--- both the high art of daimyo culture and contemporary manga, and from the West in varied forms including Anselm Kiefer, science fiction film, Claude Monet, even an echo of the late paintings of Philip Guston.

Beautiful World Meat Market 2004 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas 227 x 333 cm

gardening with oscar oiwa marilyn zetlin Oscar Oiwa is a Brazilian artist of Japanese heritage currently working in New York. He is not the first artist to record the impact of globalization but is among the most accomplished of them not only for his considerable skill as a painter but for the complexity of his view of the transformations that have occurred as a result of unbridled extreme of human ambition. He reflects on the passive acceptance of change and the gradual deformation of the environment, especially of cities, the tight-knit human-built megalopolis that refers to no specific city but instead suggests many. He does not simply scold and accuse. He shows us a world in which cultures fuse, with some overpowering and contaminating others. He makes beautiful paintings about cultural collision, environmental degradation, dehumanizing slums, and violence through attrition. His vision seems to portray the penultimate moment, a world on the precarious edge of oblivion. Oiwa was born and grew up in São Paulo, has lived in Tokyo, London, and now the United States. His formal training was as an architect. His work as a painter draws from these experiences reflected in both the content of his work and the ways in which he paints. Influences visible in the work come

Oiwa works in modules, each panel 227 x 111 centimeters. While living and working in Japan, he used the dimensions of the traditional tatami: 91 x 182 centimeters. But when he moved to London in 1996, he translated this idea into English by opting for the size of the British sheet of plywood. He lines up the panels edge to edge, to make paintings from one to six panels. The system is not only convenient for shipping and storing, it takes advantage of the benefits of a grid, giving a sense of order against which Oiwa’s panoramic and often apocalyptic vision unfurls. Recording and even celebrating globalization has many precedents in art. A tradition in Japan that flourished in the late Momoyama and early Edo periods (about 1550-1610) was the namban byobu. These are painted, richly decorative, exuberant folding screens the pictorial content of which is the arrival of the so-called Southern barbarians. More than five centuries ago, painters were fascinated by these foreigners. Their arrival marks one of the many points along the line that has led to the globalization that now unifies the world, perhaps in a wrestle-hold more than an embrace. The namban byobu record the disembarkation of the Dutch merchants who came to Japan when the imperial rulers finally succumbed to the temptation of trade with the West. The rulers of Japan foresaw commerce with Europeans as a chink in the medieval armor that they still wore in internecine battles. Ensconced in xenophobia and a code of honor that was already proving to be anachronistic, they feared that the introduction of European goods, accompanied by the Europeans themselves with their barbaric gaijin customs, would threaten their culture. They were right, of course. The paintings do not foreshadow the changes that would be introduced with the opening of Japan. The artists delight in the outlandish foreigners whom they chronicle, in their odd costumes, long noses; ruddy faces, boats that ride so high in the water, guns that emit puffs of smoke. Oiwa evokes the byobu screen with his line-up of multiple panels. He also transmits the exuberant, often sinuous composition and rich color that characterizes this form of painting even before the blue-eyed devils appeared on the scene. He uses multi-point perspective from the Japanese screen and scroll, a system of depicting space that is similar to isometric perspective used in architecture so that one can see both exterior and interior simultaneously. But he also uses Western compositional devices. Tunnel-like spaces with beamed ceilings that seem to measure the space recall the work of Anselm Kiefer. The long horizontal format and all-over activity recall the work of Jackson Pollock, with no real illusionistic space but instead a shallow trestle of space that one often reads from the bottom up. This direct frontality is less common in Oiwa’s work than is a spatial approach that places the viewer

Black Snow 2 2003 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 227 x 444 cm -- coleção/collection Arizona State University Museum

hovering above what is usually a cityscape. Claude Monet’s monumental Water Lilies comes to mind, the horizontal format, the atmospheric effects expressed so beautifully in paint. Oiwa’s paint application has increasingly loosened up. Now he is making the surface from calligraphic marks that build up, and the rhythm is increasingly more rapid. He is gaining confidence, has hit his stride in technique and creation of the metaphors that convey his meaning. He has consumed the knowledge that Monet offers and made it his own. A sense of loss permeates these paintings. If the Hudson River School gave way to a celebration of industrialization, a moment noted in painting by Jason Cropsey whose image of the river shows a wisp of smoke coming from factory chimneys upstream, then Oiwa takes that shift to the post-industrial era, to the brink of breakdown. If the work were not so blatantly beautiful, it would be despairing to contemplate it.

Oiwa draws his content from current events. Living in teeming cities, Oiwa sees these events right outside his window. He reads about DNA and tanks on adjacent pages of the daily paper and both appear in DNA. He paints air pollution like a Renaissance painter uses aerial perspective. But you can taste and smell the fetid air that shimmers over the cities. In Meat Market: Hunting, he shows a clearing in the jungle in which maps of countries are being dried like pelts, military trucks are being used as transports, and cocaine is being processed. In Beautiful World Meat Market, his reading of the news suggests to him the abattoir, with the cuts of meat in the shapes of the countries or continents of the world for sale for ghoulish consumption. In Black Snow, one of Oiwa’s most luscious and exuberant paintings, a burning river snaking its way through the composition and among the rickety houses of what could be the outskirts of Havana (the carcasses of automobiles complete that association), a Brazilian favela, Juarez, or a makeshift neighborhood in almost any overheated city in the world. It suggests

the Heiji monogatari emaki, the thirteenth-century six-panel screen, an epic painting that depicts the burning of the Sanjo Palace in the midst of war. Oiwa shows us a war without soldiers, without bombs. It is a war of survival, a world gasping for breath. Oiwa is inspired by current events. Yet his themes, like his approach to painting, are universal. The image of the garden, sometimes conspicuous by its absence, pervades his work. It is both a nostalgia for nature and its loss and a metaphor for enduring cultural values that float above the desacralization that accompanies the destruction of nature. It is interesting to think of Oiwa’s garden side by side with Monet’s. The similarities underscore the differences. Monet’s landscape is serene to the same extent that Oiwa’s, just as beautiful, is disturbing. Monet depicts a garden that delights, an inviting retreat from the cares of the ordinary world. Oiwa crowds his with the detritus of a world overflowing with broken machinery and derelict houses: the garden becoming a dump. The palpable air of Monet’s painting is made visible by nothing more noxious than moisture. We know that breathing the air of the Oiwa urban world is something to be undertaken at one’s own risk. White House Garden, about the war in Iraq, is also about greed that takes the form of black oil that a lawn sprinkler sprays in a spiral. He sees the self-destructive impulse imbedded in human creativity, the noxious fumes as well as the grandeur of ambition. But this insight does not eclipse his ability to winnow out beauty and to portray it in spite of the harshness of the present reality. Forecasting the news, Oiwa painted Landscape with Moon, a two-panel work that depicts an enormous wave about to break against a volcano. The wave and surging earth form two adjacent triangles, two forces of nature about to collide. The vision is nature before the garden, a vision of a primordial world in its violent beginnings. This painting complements his elegiac Vulcão (Volcano), painted in response to the disaster of September 11, 2001. The sense that destruction mirrors creation certainly takes the long view, sees the detail of human effort as minutiae in the Vishnaic sweep of time. But Oiwa’s great wave proved to be more than a reflection on the scale of time, creation and destruction, and more than an art historical reference. It is not only a response to the news but a foretelling of it. In Pooch, a six-panel work completed at the end of 2004, Oiwa creates a sweeping image of the city weighted under extreme environmental desecration. War and violence are only implicit. Hovering above the city is the pooch of the title, a black dog lost in the maelstrom of urban pitilessness, its eyes reflecting white as if in a police searchlight. At the extreme right, a tree gasps to survive, a vine--- or giant snake--- wrapped around it. It is the postmodern Garden of Eden in which even the tree of knowledge is an endangered species. It is the tree of Michelangelo’s Expulsion. Oiwa seems to be painting the tree and the garden after temptation is no longer the is-

Pooch 2 2014 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 227 x 222 cm

sue. The knowledge that the Biblical tree held so close was that of immortality. Mankind seems to have discarded that knowledge in a Faustian bargain, becoming an inventor and builder unto his own destruction. Oiwa presents instead the challenge of survival after an excess of knowledge, fueled by hubris, has led humankind toward an ecological dead end. The garden is nature tamed and dominated to produce for human consumption and delight. In the evolution of culture, sustenance from hunting and gathering and then nomadic herding were largely supplanted by agriculture. Working the land, people became rooted in one place. No more following the buffalo or giraffes across the plains, no more herding the goats and sheep. These earlier cultures, whose means of survival required movement across vast territories, were, inevitably, aggressive as they intruded on the turf of competing groups. Hunters are killers; herders are invaders of the land of oth-

Pooch 2004 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 227 x 666 cm -- coleção particular/private collection Taipei

ers. Agriculture is, or could or should be, conducive to peace. But the gardens of Oiwa’s paintings,stifled by the pollutants of industry and population compression, promise exhaustion rather than peace. Population compression is apparent in the works, yet no figures appear in Oiwa’s work. They are implied by the teeming human occupation, by grids of windows in skyscrapers, by the by-products of human genius. And the observer, cast as voyeur, adds human presence. If figures were depicted, they would most likely resemble the characters of Amores perros, the brutal film of Alejandro González Iñárritu. It would be too much, and Oiwa is canny enough to forebear.

The paintings present nature as a layer of floating flower forms that hover over the cities. These forms--- bursts of color that suggest simplified chrysanthemums, dandelion puffs, abstract pulses of energy--seem to have a life of their own. They are little manifestations of optimism that is essential to survival and makes life tolerable. They are also like flower forms embroidered over the woven textiles of the richest kimono. Sometimes they suggest the durability of the hovering imagination and, always, the persistence of beauty.

January 2005 The paintings, too, pay homage to the ingenuity of human survival. The makeshift is a form of invention. At the same time that houses are crumbling, elsewhere in the same painting Oiwa shows construction in progress. Further, Oiwa’s images are not without humor. Even White House Garden, the most explicit indictment of exploitation, bears the mark of the comedic with its depiction of the White House as a garden folly.

Marilyn A. Zeitlin, director and chief curator of the Arizona State University Art Museum, Tempe,AZ,USA, has previous museum experience as curator and acting co-director of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Houston, texas, as well

Occasionally the beauty of the city predominates in Oiwa’s vision. In Night Flowers, a lyrical nocturne, Oiwa showers the air with magenta blossoms that slowly sift down over a building the glowing canopy of which welcomes its occupants back to their homes.

as executive director of the Washington Project for the Arts in Washington,DC, among others. Zeitlin served as U.S. Commissioner to the Venice Biennale, in 1995, curating Bill Viola.

city of the future In 1983, São Paulo presented a contradictory scenario, particularly to the younger generation, of which Oiwa was part: on the one hand, there was hope springing up from the imminent process of political opening; on the other hand, there was a desolated cultural scene following devastation by the military dictatorship that lasted from 1964 to 1985. In other words, the city waved with a still blurred possibility and the anguish of immediate cultural precedents that would allow the development of a sound project. Or yet, there was an eagerness for launching and the lack of a reliable launching pad.

Body & Soul 2014 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 138 x 274 cm

LIC studio 2009 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 137 x 273 cm

Light Flower 2005 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 227 x 333 cm -- coleção particular/private collection São Paulo

Gardening (Manhattan) 2002 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 227 x 333 cm -- coleção/collection The National Museum of Modern Art Tokyo

My hurried footsteps seemingly stir up recollections in my mind, bringing back images of things I have seen and done recently. My most recent discovery was the Frick Collection in midtown Manhattan. The museum venue itself is not too big, but it holds an incalculable content. In view of my particular taste for 18th- and 19th-century Dutch paintings, I was glad to see at the museum painting peers of the caliber of a Johannes Vermeer or Rembrandt van Rijn. I have never managed to adapt to the modern Art School system, so I hold the old mentors as important references for me. Besides showing my work in Leiden, Holland, a few years ago, I have had several opportunities to visit Amsterdam and vicinity. This familiarity with the local landscape and context always comes in handy when opportunities come up to view works by these old Flemish colleagues, exchange information and update myself professionally. I have thought of trying a game of light and shadow, using a black backdrop and parts of it in half-light.

Chelsea Constellation 2010 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 227 x 333 cm

gardening oscar oiwa Chelsea, New York. Different types of people hurry along the streets. The early morning is quite cold. I quicken my footsteps. This is how my daily routine begins: I wake up before seven AM and I take my kid to school. I buy a copy of The New York Times, always at the same deli on 6th Ave. I take the subway from 14th Street station, headed for my studio in Williamsburg. The few minutes aboard the train are the time I have to read the headline news. War in Iraq, Democrat presidential primaries, suicidal bombings and terrorist attacks in Jerusalem. I have never been involved nor directly exposed to any war or confrontational action. I haven’t even had any personal accident or serious illness. So I try to figure what an individual’s body blasting in slow motion would look like, as he died for an ideal. I think of a scenario where the blast scattered this person’s flesh, blood and entrails all over the street, turning them into letters and drawings so that his message will have a better repercussion in the international media. New York. There are days when temperatures drop to near zero degrees . I get off at Lorimer station and walk to my studio. On the frozen sidewalk, soot-blackened snow partly covers the piling trash. Along my way, I spot the dead and frozen body of a white dove on the sidewalk, its guts pilled out. Its white feathers blend in with the snow, their outline barely discernible. Its entrails form a particularly eye-catching sanguine design that reminds me of paintings by Francis Bacon. The sight is rather disgusting but the design is abstract and beautiful. The air is cold and crisp. I walk briskly, with water vapor trailing away from my nostrils.

The sidewalk is slippery. New instances of brain bouncing bring back additional memories. New York’s Chinatown. Its sidewalks are crammed with street vendors selling all kinds of stuff, from faux luxury items to typically Oriental vegetables. In the small businesses, the elderly shout in Chinese and create quite a ruckus. On Bayard Street there is a tiny café where they say the old vanguard of the sixties – John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Nam Jun Paik and others – met over Chinese beef buns and coffee. I step inside this crummy snack bar and take a seat near the window, overlooking the shop-lined street. I have always disliked the sight of roasted pig meat and Peking duck hanging at the entrance of Chinese restaurants. To me, the red meat oozing fat on display in restaurant windows are still cut-up dead bodies of animals. Asian countries are very different amongst themselves, but they have much in common, no doubt. Based on my little knowledge of Japanese writing, I take Chinese ideograms from restaurant and shop signs and I put together in ideograms the words “Beautiful World Meat Market”. And this is how I decide the title of my next painting. I reach the studio building. All at once, I climb the flights of the external stairs to the fifth floor. I enter the building and go on to my studio. The moment I open the door to my studio, the smell of oil paint fills my nostrils. I turn on the lights and open the window. A new work about to be finished is hanging on the wall. I set myself to work and, after one month of combining different issues – suicidal bombings, wars that tear the world apart, the frozen white dove, Vermeer’s paintings, the confusion of Chinatown retail shops, and other references – I finish the painting “Beautiful World Meat Market” . As I clap in self-praise, the doves perched on the windowsill take flight. I sit on the wooden chair and look at another work leaning against the opposite wall. A bigger painting still, it is titled “Gardening (Red Flores)”. Inci-

dentally, speaking of the trio – John, Merce and Nan –, shortly before moving to my present residence in Chelsea, I used to live in the Westbeth Artists’ Housing Complex –the same building where the Merce Cunningham Foundation is located, in the West Village. On lucky days, I chanced to see Master Cunningham, the father of contemporary dance, in the front lobby – he was already pretty old then, and had trouble walking. I lived in a loft maintained by a foundation that had sponsored my trip. Thirty years earlier, the same foundation had sponsored Nan Jun Paik (a young Korean video artist) when he moved to the United States and went to stay in that same apartment. In our nights out drinking, my neighbors who were long-time dwellers used to tell me old local anecdotes. They said Paik’s piano used to sit right there where I kept my sofa. The Merce Cunningham Studio still occupies the eleventh floor of this building. Through the back stairs I had access to a roof garden that overlooked the entire downtown area and allowed a partial view over the Hudson River. The painting “Gardening (Red Flower)” was inspired by this view.

Wide Web. Its visual elements come from the meat-packing district, where the business of meat processing and distribution remains active to date. The play on lights that comes from inside the construction represents the nonmaterial forms that exist within the human spirit. In the center of the painting I portrayed an unreal person who operates a computer. And the computer, in its turn, controls world trade, represented by the various cuts of meat shaped like different countries. Before accomplishing this big scale work, I produced a similar painting of more modest dimensions that, in turn, rendered an example of its inspiring theme. It was painted in New York and then sent to a gallery in São Paulo that kept it for a while before showing it in Buenos Aires, where it was acquired by a Swiss art collector. The work itself is a keen example of international trade in the era of globalization. Whereas information may travel across the world electronically, my own being is physically present in this world. After working on my feet for hours, I stop for a coffee break. I get a table at a café near my studio where I usually take my laptop computer. I see my hands moving over the keyboard and my fingers typing; I cross and uncross my legs. I listen to the buzz of other customers. I take note of the smell and temperature of the environment. I see my own reflection on the glass window. No doubt, I must exist physically. I live like everyone, with a schedule, appointments, responsibilities, and common places. But at this exact moment I would like to turn my eyeball 180 degrees and see what the eyes cannot see – the inside of my physical being, the home of many mysteries. The series “Gardening” sprang up from this gap between real life and imagination. They are imaginary gardens that cultivate numerous existential references taken from contemporary society. The colorful blotches are at the same time flowers and bomb blasts. In old Flemish paintings, the attendance of soap bubbles that children blew represented the flimsiness of life. I find the same flimsiness in lingering bomb smoke. Colorful smoke seen from afar reminds us of flowers. Whether they be flower or smoke, both are beautiful and quite ephemeral. The cities depicted have references in real cities; the flowers of the garden, in unreal things. On the first painting of the series executed in 2002 and titled “Gardening (Manhattan)”, curator Mika Kuraya wrote:

Aquarium 1999 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 227 x 333 cm My ideas for new artworks do not come from thin air. They are drawn from associations of different facts. Facts can be actual events. Facts can be diverse images produced by diverse media. They can also be unreal occurrences and images developed within the mind. New works are often a continuation of old works. Ideas may spring from the association of different facts. They can also derive from the sedimentation of past experiences. The artwork “Beautiful World Meat Market”, besides being born from the association of different facts, it was born of the sedimentation of an older work called ”WWW.Com” . This work was inspired in the current modus operandi of world trade, which involves the World

“Different colored flowers float on a huge canvas. Below them are innumerous skyscrapers in Manhattan. This could be a carpet of flowers spread over the darkening sky of Manhattan or it could be a flower covered surface of water with Manhattan sunk deep below. The shadows of a bird with its wings spread and the Empire State Building cross the image diagonally. There are three viewpoints in this image – that of the flying bird, the flower, and the people living in the city of skyscrapers. Depending on where we position our eyes, the perspective changes drastically on a dizzying scale. Upon further examination, we notice that there are shapes that look like round white clouds among the flowers. Once we realize that these are circles of smoke and, in fact, all the

flowers are modeled after smoke rising from a bombing attack, the movement of that smoke rising upwards from below and then spreading horizontally makes us even dizzier.” The second piece of the series, “Gardening (Way to Peace)” , is related to the U.S. army infantry that led the assault on Baghdad during the war against Iraq. It relays the actual contradiction found in the U.S. administration’s resolution to wage War in the name of Peace. “Gardening (Red Flores)” comes from the view of the terrace next to Master Cunningham’s dance studio. “Gardening (Ginza in Fall)” comes from the visit to an art office in the main Tokyo shopping district. I had bought a book from my friend on psychological disorders such as phobias, schizophrenia, amnesia and others. This work is an attempt to portray issues related to things that actually exist before our eyes and to the distorted information about these things that we perceive inside. The world is divided into countries. Within these nations the society is divided into social classes. There is such a thing as the discourse on free social movement, it’s true; yet the vast majority of people are born, live and die within the same educational, cultural and economic strata. For an individual who is born and lives all his/her life within a society, self-assessment is and will always be a very difficult thing to do. The same applies in a broader scale to countries. These were the thoughts that inspired the painting “Storm”. The landscape portrays the outskirts of a city that could be Rio de Janeiro or São Paulo. On the foreground there are the bigger buildings representing the government, divided in many governmental departments. Each shop represents a governmental department; the executive power is positioned on the left and the church, on the right. In the social unrest, which the storm represents in the painting, the unsupported popular stratum crumbles within the cityscape rendered in odd perspective. This painting represents the social structure of Brazil; however, with a simple change of characters this could also represent the international arena. The same occurs with the work of the series “Black Snow” in which I portray the lower-class, selfbuilt housing in the outskirts of São Paulo. Here the white snow of developed countries in the northern hemisphere is transformed into black snow. The black blotches are at once bullet holes left by the violence found in the low-income outskirts of major Brazilian cities. Other works also derive from my memories of São Paulo, the city where I was born and raised. In this city of great cultural miscegenation and socio-economic differences, the contrasts observed within the society are to me a great source of inspiration. In the same manner that there is a wealth of life in the oceans, where warm and cold water currents clash, I feel that Brazil is a great place from which to draw cultural stimulus from social clashes. “Cityfall” emerged from this context as a fine example within my series on psychological landscapes. It’s starting point was the view from the apartment of a couple friend of mine, in São Paulo. Like in a dream, the real mixes with

Moon Light Barcelona 1998 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas 227 x 333 cm -- coleção particular/private collection Panama

Light Rabbit 1996 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 227 x 222 cm coleção particular/private collection Paris

impressed me as running lights in the early evening. Later, in Tokyo, I painted black cats as if to set a contrast with the luminous rabbits. These paintings were inspired in cats that roam the shadowy network of alleyways in my old neighborhood. Black cats came from darkness, and luminous rabbits came from light. And thus the series “Light Rabbit Meet with Shadow Cats” came into being. Giving further reign to imagination, other animals emerged like for example in “Light Birds” and “Aquarium” among many others. The latter relates to environmental issues dealt with in humorous manner. The inspiration for it came from the polluted waters of the Tokyo Bay, while still also drawing upon a universal theme. Along this line, there were two other works – “Ecosystem”, which portrays the wood cycle within a microcosm, and the “Greenhouse Effect” which I painted after U.S. President Bush announced his intention not to ratify and implement the Kyoto Protocol. The U.S. foreign policy and its consequences have provided a fathomless source of negative inspiration. “Volcano” goes without comment. “War Game” portrays the U.S. war on Afghanistan. This painting offers a first glimpse of the flowers that later will appear in abundance in the “Gardening” series. The large-format “War & Peace” portrays the two sides of human nature, at times very intelligent and at times extremely stupid and violent. It portrays the northern part of the city of Tokyo, which was severely bombed during the Second World War. History reports on the death of 110,000 civilians on a single night. In “Lightbox” , the juxtaposed images of the tree featured in “War & Peace” and of smoke in “War & Peace (War)” form the image of a human face in profile. Shadow Cat meet with Light Rabbit 1998 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 227 x 222 cm the unreal and fades away into the misty silence, down the waterfall. This conclusion was reached on the basis of a preceding piece, a work executed in 1999 and titled “Inside” . In this landscape painted from a picture taken in the city of Gifu, in the countryside of Japan, something coming from the outside penetrates the destroyed home. The play on light from the real world that permeates the psychological realm follows the same principle adopted in the painting of “Cityfall.” A good example of serial production is in the attendance of animals in my works. The first instance was in the painting “Crow’s Nest” , painted from a construction site in the City, London’s traditional financial center. Another painting, which inaugurated the “Light Rabbit” series , was executed at the same time period, in 1997, while I was working in London on an artist-inresidence program. In this work there are 17 luminous rabbits, inspired by the bunnies that populate the green areas between runways at Charles De Gaulle airport, in Paris. On one occasion, at twilight time, I saw hundreds of rabbits scattering in all directions, startled by the roar of jet turbines. The scene

White Os(Car) New York 2003 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 125 x 223 cm

Outside my window, the doves return from their workday. I wash the paintbrushes, close the windows and turn off the lights. I leave the building and take the external stairs, breathing in the cool air. I look out to the beautiful twilight. It’s at dusk that “Light Rabbits” turn into “Shadow Cats”. I switch my thoughts from imaginary things to the reality of everyday life. A couple of years ago, while waiting for my first daughter to be born, I went to show my work in Barcelona. On the occasion, I was a guest at several apartments, one of which offered a spectacular view. From this vantage point I took all the relevant visual records of places I had visited. Later, in Tokyo, I combined them into a sole picture, set in a beautiful twilight: in the center, a big bed; on the left side, a plane; and on the right side, a moon – representing myself, a trip and a child, respectively. Thus the painting “Moon Light Barcelona” was came into being. Travel and family are another constant theme in my paintings. In the series “White (Os)car,” the white car traveling through several continents represents myself. The other cars in the landscape without anyone inside represent my family. For now I have executed three paintings of this series: “White (Os)car 1” , in Weimar; “White (Os)Car – Forest” ), in the Tokyo downtown, and the third “Rainbow”, in New York. The painting “Luna Portrait” is one of the rare painting in which I portray people. It was done in Tokyo, right before we moved to New York. It portrays in the background my studio on the verge of being disassembled and, on the foreground, the daughter that was born and spent her early childhood in this house.

Crowd 2010 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 227 x 444 cm

Many other works were produced at this studio in Tokyo. The house itself that sheltered the studio is featured in the painting “20th Century”. The threat posed by North Korean missiles inspired the painting titled “Camouflage” , which also portrays old buildings that gradually disappear through real estate speculation. This theme is present in other works of this same period, as for example “Black Duck”, “Red Sofa” and “Island”, among others. The century end inspired the series “Noah’s Ark.” The first of them, “Noah’s Ark 1” was based on a photo essay done in the city of Lausanne, where I had also gone to show my work. The second painting of the series, “Noah’s Ark 2” , was created in Tokyo. The third, “Noah’s Ark 3” , speaks of death and came from my imagination.

Sun & Moon 2008 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 227 x 333 cm

Amazing events take place in ordinary, everyday life. On my way home from the studio, in front of the grocery shop on Hudson Avenue I spot a movie crew filming on location, which is something quite common in the West Village. I walk along the sidewalk in the midst of the crew, spotlights and equipment. As I proceed, I look straight at the lights beaming on me. I nearly bump into a gentleman who was standing there, his back to me, and I go on my way. I turn to look back: the gentleman in question was Jack Nicholson, the movie star. Trying to escape the bedlam of the film set, I go into the shop to get groceries. In a neighborhood where you run into celebrities such as Spider Man,

Michael Jackson and so many other mutant creatures, an unassuming bunch of carrots on the shelf attracts my attention. Smooth skin, gorgeous curves, perfect coloring, all of them are the same size. Like Hollywood stars, contemporary nutrition goes through a whole transformation process to become a consumer product. “Natural”, “organic” and other such attributes are featured on many food labels. Somehow I feel that, in a consumer society, food is no longer merely a gentleman I nearly bump into on the sidewalk; rather, it is a consumer product called “Jack Nicholson.” That gentleman on the sidewalk outside is equivalent to the small, crooked carrots I used to pick in our backyard when I was a kid. The

mutant carrots of the grocery shop are like the Jack Nicholson of the silver screen. The carrots that bothered me were the starting point for “Farm” , my work that speaks of food consumption in contemporary society. Chelsea at night. Different types of people walk the streets. The early morning cold returns full force. I quicken my pace. With the bouncing of my head, old memories once again are stirred in my mind. I miss many of things and people of my past. Yet my reality is here and now, walking the streets of New York in the evening chill. Paintings are created in my head that then are shaped on canvas and later shown. Eventually, little by little they are passed on to the hands of collectors, institutions or museums. It is a slow process, extremely slow for the Internet era. Many boring intellectuals advocate that there is no longer a need to paint, for it would be difficult to accomplish anything original, or even better than the painting of the past. In these digital times, painting is a slow process and, commercially speaking, an awful choice of expressive

Noah’s Boat 3 (beach) 2001 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 227 x 222 cm

medium. However, painting is the medium that has survived best over the years, and I cannot relinquish the aim of executing fine painting. One must have a hefty dose of patience to stay away from the temptation of immediate success. This book is a gardening project dedicated to all the stubborn at heart whose perseverance, I hope, will lead them to new discoveries within a realm believed to be lifeless. Works are seeds that are not finished upon being exhibited. In fact, this is where their development begins. I hope my seeds will germinate, grow and someday become beautiful trees. Now, whether they will turn out flowers or smoke… that is up to each one of them to determine.

Noah’s Boat 1999 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 227 x 222 cm -coleção particular/private collection Tokyo

Oscar Oiwa Brooklyn, New York, Spring 2004

White Os(Car) Forest 2000 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 227 x 444 cm -- coleção/collection Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo

Storm 2002 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 227 x 444 cm -- coleção/collection Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art, Hyogo

Divina Commedia 2005 óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 227 x 444 cm White Os(Car) 1 1999 óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 227 x 444 cm

Chamaleon 2004 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 227 x 444 cm coleção particular/private collection Tokyo

my encounter with traveling oscar oiwa I took the bullet train, got off at Akita, and took a taxi from the station. Once the passanger was on board, as if part of the car, the driver automatically closed the door, muttered “Good Morning”, switched the meter on in a matter-of-couse way, and began driving through the town he has been living in for years. I wonder how many times a day he repeats this procedure? The taxi left the station and came to a halt on a red light at the first crossing. Looking at me through the mirror, the driver posed the customary question, “ Where have you come from?”. Before coming to Akita, there was an exhibition in Utsunomiya, so, physically speaking, that is where I came from , but I stayed there for only one night. Rather than saying I came from Utsunomiya, i felt would be more appropriate to answer that I came from Tokyo, where I was before then. Yet ,on further consideration, I realize that I had only been in tokyo for a few days and before that, i was in Kansai area. However, I din’t spend that long in Kansai either. Before that, I was in Tokyo. The reason I was in Tokyo was to file my income tax reurn, which was already overdue. If where one declares one’s income is one’s own town, the most accurate answer would be to say that I came from Tokyo. The traffic light turned green. As if having heard the answer to

the first question, the driver automatically issued tAhe next line. “ The rainy season still hasn’t come to an end this year, has it?” Being uninterested in the weather forecast, to me, the previous question about where I had come from was still lingering on my mind. I did indeed declare my income in Tokyo, but I arrived there only two weeks ago and am due to return to New York the day after tomorrow. I have been living in New York for exactly one year, but my real hometown in neither Tokyo or New York. i was born in São Paulo and lived there for 24 years so that is probably what I should call my hometown. The lights turned from green to yellow. Although I hadn’t replied, the next question was automatically discharged from the driver’s mout. “Do you think the Hanshin Tigers will win this year?” Where did I come from ? When my daughter was still a young child, in case she goat lost, I tried hard to teach her our home address so that she would be able to get home. “Luna, where do you live?” Her answer was always, “The earth! “Indeed. I decided I would quote my daughter. The moment I was about to open my mouth to tell the driver “The earth!”, as if we had been hot in conversation, the next comment came flying towards me. “That homerun was really great, wasn’t it?”. I looked carefully into the mirror. The driver was certainly staring at the mirror, but rather than looking at me. it seemed as though he was looking at his refletiion and chatting to himself. As if in response to his other self , he nodded “0h man, I see!” and seemed perfectly satisfield. The two of us shared the same space for a moment but, to me, it seemed that we were living in two separate worlds. Peoplelike me, who have spent a long time abroad, meet people Bfrom different countries with different languages and thouhts. Although there are many people in this world, the majority of them seem to have nothing to do with me. Yet ,through the coincidental encounter with the driver, who lives in a separate world. I was able to reach my destination and the driver was able to earn money for his work. Each person differs from the other and there are many realms which cannot be instruded. Even so, recently I have begun to feel that it might be possible to get on with others while remaining a stranger.

Tokyo, Summer 2003

from Boa Viagem exhibition leaflet, Utsunomiya Museum of Art, Utsunomiya, 2003

Rainbow 2003 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 227 x 555 cm -- coleção/collection Takamatsu City Museum Collection, Kagawa

Solar Eclipse 2006 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 227 x 333 cm

Sleeping man 2008 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 111 x 227 cm

Long Island city 2006 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 111 x 227 cm

I have learned to interpret the world in my own manner; and, with a bit of training, I also learned to render this interpretation in the form of paintings.

Corporation 2006 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 227 x 333 cm coleção particular/private collection Athens

chaos oscar oiwa I sit at a café table near my studio and get ready to write this essay. I note that the shop wall is covered with texts and illustrations on the dissemination of Coffea arabica around the world, and then in Brazil. My gaze rests for a moment on a small poster showing mulatto farmhands working on a coffee plantation, a reproduction of a painting by Cândido Portinari. I read his biography. Portinari was born in 1903 in Brodósqui, a small town in the state of São Paulo. In 1929 he was awarded a travel prize that took him to Europe, where he became familiar with the modernist movements. As a consequence, upon returning to Brazil he became one of the icons of the country’s modern painting. Portinari died three years before I was born. Ever since then times have changed and I feel he effects of globalization in my personal life. After spending the first 25 years of my life in São Paulo, I took the opportunities to live in Tokyo, London and then New York, where I still reside. Come to think of it, I have lived in four different continents. Africa is the only one missing. Through my observations and experience living among peoples of different languages and cultures I have learned to see the world as a whole. I was never talkative, not even as a child, but then I learned to be aware of everything that goes on around me. Thanks to my quiet nature and penchant for observation

The canvas I executed recently and titled Leo portrays the cityscape seen from a ninth-floor window at Saint Vincent Hospital, in Manhattan, where my son Leo was born. Leo is the name of a lion cub in an old Japanese manga by Tezuka Osamu turned into the theatrical movie Jungle Emperor Leo, originally released in 1965 by Tezuka Productions. Later, this feature animation inspired Disney’s The Lion King (1994). I think the newer Disney productions are terrible, but I have always liked the scenes in the older movies, in particular the thicket in Bambi. So I thought I would paint something colorful and apparently banal – something that would bring to mind a beautiful thicket in summertime where my cub lion could build his realm. Yet, the apparent beauty of this scene hides an event that shook the foundations of the world’s greatest power. At the center back of this cityscape there once stood the World Trade Center twin towers. I reckon this is the hospital into which terrorist attack victims were first and primarily rushed. Possibly tens of people died at this same hospital, from the windows of which they looked out onto the same scenery that I now observed. Most fortunately, however, there I was, at the same place, except that now witnessing a reversed situation: the beginning of a life! As a child, I once had the opportunity to show my drawings to Dr. Tezuka Osamu, a physician by training, and a well-read individual who successfully introduced a bit of intelligence in mass communications. As he scrutinized my drawings with the same eyes of a doctor examining a patient, he advised me to stop reading comics and to take up other means of expression such as music, literature and film, so I would not be influenced by the cartoons that I so enjoyed looking at. Many years have passed and I still recall this advice as one of the rare few that I decided to follow during my educational training. Nowadays, despite living in the center of everything, I rarely attend exhibitions of contemporary art. I find that the aesthetic theories taught at schools somewhat give backing for the rubbish inscribed in a certain logic to become perfectly acceptable. This is how I see plenty of low-quality things being made, shown and put up for sale. As I look at different markets around the world, whether it be the Tokyo fish market, the New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street, the trinket street vendors in downtown São Paulo, or the black market for stolen cars, I think that few marketplaces are as full of misjudgments as that of contemporary art, one that operates with abstract and relative values. Like a retiree seated at a sidewalk table, watching the street scene for hours, I sit quietly pondering people’s behavior, children’s mental development, social movements, the capital market, the absurdity of wars, world politics, the

advancements of science and other assorted themes. As banal as they may look, these facts have provided, for their most part, the starting point for my new works. The paintings Apartment and Falling Water House portray the strange order existing within the chaos where the absurd is inscribed in a certain context and becomes perfectly acceptable. The former is a tridimensional recreation of an old series titled post-modern architecture that I produced after the Kobe earthquake (1995). Although chaotic, the scene (a collage of newspaper illustrations) displays a certain logic in that it rebuilds a high-end dwelling featuring Le Corbusier couches, checkered black-and-white marble flooring, plasma TV, and a Porsche parked in a no-outlet garage. In addition to the current images, art history also provides a reference: to create the play of light in this scene I studied a few canvases by British painter J.M.W. Turner (1775-1850). And my obsession for details was drawn from works by the also British painter John Constable (1776-1837). Although both artists attended the Royal Academy of Arts at about the same time, their respective works are quite dissimilar. And, while observing their differences, I discover their virtues. Falling Water House is a direct reference to the house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1935. While abiding by the dogma of the modernist discourse, this house of mine is intended as an investigation into the perfect harmony between architecture and the environment. Apart from handsome academic theories, the idea of this work in itself came from the images of the homeless living under bridges in the city of São Paulo. Luxury and litter. Black and white. Day and night. War and peace. Contrast has always been a chief element in my work. Another reference for this work is the Ponte Vecchio, Florence’s oldest bridge on the Arno River, the central part of which is home to rows of shops. I find it interesting that a bridge was given another function besides spanning a gap.

and more abstract. Thus, a European-based company might have its technology division set up in Japan and its IT division, in India; it might source raw materials from Latin America and energy from the Middle East, and it might manufacture goods destined for the U.S. consumer market. What is more, this company might have its stock pulverized throughout the world. I guess that nowadays corporations only work in this way and, if they were to bring together all their divisions under a same roof, they would probably not operate like clockwork.

Apartment 2006 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 227 x 333 cm coleção particular/private collection Rio de Janeiro

The canvas Coliseum portrays the great circus show that the media has set up within the environment of today’s global society. If ages ago, in the era of bread and circus, all roads led to Rome, I believe that today we can say about the media that “All waves lead to the main capital cities of the world”. Whereas any irrelevant piece of news originated in New York is broadcast live to the world, an accident causing hundreds of casualties in a peripheral country does not even make the news briefs section of major newspapers worldwide. This picture was painted in a more than propitious moment: during the World Cup soccer tournament. Corporation is a portrait of large business organizations bound to experience unbridled growth. The financial market has been developing at an increasingly faster rate worldwide and, as a result, the notion of company has grown more

Falling Water House 2006 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 227 x 444 cm coleção particular/private collection São Paulo

according to scientists and government officials, global warming is inevitable, then I cannot but contemplate the beauty of such tragedy.

Coliseum 2006 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 226 x 444 cm

The paintings Firefly and Long Island City present scenes that contrast with reality. Both are cityscapes that belong in my private life. The former is a work that explores the contrast of day and night in a symmetrical city with a river running through it. This river [rio, in Portuguese] could well be Rio de Janeiro. The same Rio de Janeiro where I started my art career, at age 19, with a show at Galeria Macunaíma, in the former Ministry of Education and Culture building. The latter picture, Long Island City, depicts the industrial district where my studio is located. In its making, I took for reference studies from digital photos done in the computer, a few old works, and also the play of humor from old black-and-white comedy films by Max Linder, in which amusem*nt or misery come up unexpectedly. Stairs (Page 81) is the type of work that I have called “psychological landscape”, It is a landscape painting that seeks to portray that which, although spiritually sensed, the eye doesn’t see. It seeks to render my existence in the world. The long diagonal stairway may lead from life to death – or from inferno to paradise, depending on one’s vantage point. Between these two extremes life on earth takes place, quite eventfully. Here again, there is the strong contrast between black and white, construction and destruction, inferno and paradise. Polar House (Page 91) is a painting in minimalist colors inspired in the melting of the polar ice caps as result of the global warming effect. It is another fine example of psychological landscape, one that depicts the melting away of my belief in progress. One cannot deny that the ordinary citizen’s lifestyle was substantially enhanced over the past few decades; on the other hand, one cannot deny that environmental problems have increased at the same rate. If,

I look back to the wall poster. Portinari died in 1962, in Rio de Janeiro. There are a few things we share: we are both painters, born in São Paulo to immigrant parents. His masterpieces include two immense murals, Wall and Peace, which he executed under commission for the United Nations General Assembly building. A few months ago, when I was there for a guided visit, I stepped up to the podium of the Conference Hall and from there I shared the same “vantage point” of the world’s leaders. Momentarily in the position of a world authority, I viewed Polar House as representing much more than the artist’s disbelief in progress. In fact it represents the melting of the foundations that sustained progress throughout the 20th century, beginning at the industrial revolution. And the collapse of the twin towers gave blatant proof of this theory.  Every time I observe my surroundings, whether it be a room, a city or a country, I build associations between the apparently disconnected facts and then organize them in the form of a painting – or, at times, a text. In my childhood days I was a mediocre student, I totally lacked the skills to write a simple essay. However, with drawing I learned to organize ideas and a variety of visual elements within a small paper sheet. So it was only in my adulthood, and thanks to the indirect influence of my artistic activity, that I learned how to outline a text such as this one, which I am about to conclude. I finish my coffee and walk back to the studio. Oscar Oiwa Long Island City, New York, August 2006

Oasis 2006 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 227 x 444 cm

Prime Ministerial Nightmare 2008 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 227 x 555 cm -- coleção/collection Mori Art Museum Collection, Tokyo

Asian Dragon 1995 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 182 x 546 cm -- coleção/collection Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, Aichi

The light factory 2010 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 227 x 666 cm

Tunnel without Exit 1997 -- acrílica, café/acrylic, coffee on plywood -- 115 x 227 cm -- coleção/collection The Delfina Studio Trust Foundation

Green Landscape 1997 -- óleo sobre madeira/oil on plywood -- 115 x 227 cm -- coleção/collection The Delfina Studio Trust Foundation

Flower 1995 -- acrílica sobre madeira/acrylic on plywood -- 182 x 364 cm -- coleção/collection Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, Aichi

we both enrolled in 1983. As early as in those days, Oiwa devised a number of procedures that have charged his work practice with sufficient vigor to last and mature over time, as well as the lasting, comprehensive approach that has enabled him to keep on expanding his dialogue field, again and again. At architectural school, Oscar Oiwa successfully achieved a then challenging and unlikely feat: he created his own launch pad.

Cityfall 2003 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 227 x 333 cm -- coleção particular/private collection, Miami the urban gaze of oscar oiwa angelo bucci During the celebrations of the Chinese New Year 2009 a renowned and yet unfinished skyscraper was ablaze in Beijing. In São Paulo, images of the major fire were broadcast live on television. The impact of that episode brought to mind the scene in City from the Future that Oscar Oiwa had painted on canvas the previous year, at his New York studio. In this painting, the same building – CCTU Complex – is featured as an intact edifice, built to conclusion, and definitely an integral element of the Beijing cityscape. City from the Future reveals some features of Oiwa’s work by delivering news with the minutiae of a cartoon, heralding urgencies with the dimensions of graffiti, building landscapes out of fragments like a mosaic and, at the same time, extracting such fragments from the urban context – in collage-like manner. On the other hand, this canvas is not restricted to anything; it reaches beyond to reveal the informed and critical urban experience imprinted in the artist’s remarkable body of metropolitan works. In fact, the three major cities that on the occasion were fortuitously brought together integrate the artist’s habitual circuit. Nowadays, Oscar Oiwa addresses the world. Notwithstanding, I wish to make a note of an earlier time and place, namely the period of consolidation of the lifelong artistic project that Oiwa conceived at the University of São Paulo’s School of Architecture and Urbanism, in which

In 1983, São Paulo presented a contradictory scenario, particularly to the younger generation: on the one hand, there was hope springing up from the imminent process of political opening; on the other hand, there was a desolated cultural scene following devastation by the military dictatorship that lasted from 1964 to 1985. In other words, the city waved with a still blurred possibility and the anguish of immediate cultural precedents that would allow the development of a sound project. Or yet, there was an eagerness for launching and the lack of a reliable launching pad. This scene also prevailed at the school of architecture. However, Oiwa was not impressed by it. As it seems, as early as in his first year of university, he had an inner certainty and a defined goal: to become an artist. Having materialized onto a studio wall on campus, this clear conviction lives on in the form of a 22-meter-long mural painting that Oscar Oiwa joined by a small group of classmates executed under his leadership. At the same time and unlike frequently seen, Oiwa’s inner certainty did not make him impervious or averse to academic subjects. On the contrary, he availed himself of an architectural repertoire and the observation of urban themes taken from São Paulo’s typically metropolitan scale to accouter his own artistic arsenal. I mean to say in that place and time Oiwa definitely merged into his artistic project the approach of the architect that he was to become. I would like to depart from the manifestations of Oiwa’s architectural approach to works of painting to indentify that which I view as a crucial point of my peripheral reading. On a visit to Oiwas’s New York home and studio, his overall body of works that include paintings in progress and finished pictures may be interpreted as a discerning collection of city fragments. Here I am neither referring to any specific building or urban cutout, nor to the depiction of urban scenes. The artist’s process is quite distinct. I believe it harks back to his formative years in São Paulo, a metropolis of such giant scale (population:20 million) that it cannot be taken in whole, and the meaning of which cannot be pieced together

except fragment by fragment, so as to compose a whole that, however, is not just the sum total of the parts addition. Oscar Oiwa adopts a procedure developed in the São Paulo environment to cast fragments on canvas, just as architects cast them on their architectural plans. To the artist, the city doubles as source and target of his reflections. It is at once the universe of possibilities and his single possible interlocutor. Therefore, city fragments constitute sheer propositional power in the artist’s collection. In other words, Oiwa carefully removes them from their original arrangement or urban context, as if to free them, only to provide them with a propositional power once again. Thus, city fragments represent power in the discourse of the artist who uses them to compose new statements that he casts on canvas.

City from the Future 2008 óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 227 x 444 cm

This initial procedure – the fragment turned into power to compose a new statement – is clearly demonstrated as different possibilities in space in works such as Apartment (2006), Holes (2003), Post-modern architecture (2003), and Solar Eclipse (2003), or even as possibilities in time, as for example in City from the Past (2008) or City from the Future (2008). Furthermore, the outcome of this first procedure has led the artist to turn to other significant recourses that include transposition of meanings. Such was the case, for instance, with Banana (1984), featuring a Sao Paulo public square as a banana by taking the color pattern of the elements that took over its space in haphazard manner; Dog = 10 m3 air by day (1994-5), in which a dog is shown next to a balloon representing the daily amount of air it consumes; WWW.com (2004), featuring a meat market in which the hanging pieces of meat are shaped like country maps, as if they were actually shaped with the human flesh of their inhabitants; or Asian Kitchen (2008), bringing deviated notions of space, time, scale and matter.

City from the Past 2008 óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 227 x 444 cm

For a long time now Oscar Oiwa’s dialogue arena has extended beyond the metropolitan boundaries of São Paulo to make way in the world. At this moment, in his New York studio, he is preparing an exhibition of eight largeformat canvases to be held at BTAP gallery, in Beijing. My presentation briefly revisits a small stretch of Oscar Oiwa’s career that I have been privileged to accompany -- at first, from up close, and later, from the distance. I believe that his four years of architecture school were crucially important for the development and maturing of his work process and his approach to painting. However, as I have mentioned, this is my peripheral reading. The focal point of his work is manifestly in the craft to which he devotes himself

Post-Modern Architecture 1997 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -227 x 333 cm -- coleção particular/private collection São Paulo

with masterful skills and admirable consistency. It is, therefore, in practice that Oscar Oiwa ascertains both the regularity and the top quality of his art production. Today I know for sure that the pad from which Oiwa launched himself more than twenty years ago was too unstable to ensure him a safe launching. Even so, he was quite successful at it. His achievement makes the same path accessible to potential followers that, I am sure, will be many

Dog=10m Air³ by Day 1995 -- técnica mista/mixed media 500 x 250 x 250 cm -- Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo

WWW.Com 2003 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 227 x 444 cm -- coleção/collection Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art

U.N. Meat Market 2005 óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 227 x 333 cm coleção particular/private collection Seoul Meat Market (Eating) 2005 óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 227 x 333 cm

Do you like Iraq? 2005 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 227 x 333 cm -- coleção/collection Phoenix Museum of Art

90s In the late 90s, I went several times to Miyagi in Northern Japan, where the earthquake and tsunamis hit very hard. I was there to undertake an art project in a place before the Convention Center. Miyagi was a beautiful place for me and I felt choked up watching 10 meter waves destroying its coastal community. In 2008, I had the pleasure of holding an exhibition at f*ckushima Prefectural Museum of Art in f*ckushima, the prefecture where the troubled nuclear plant is located. I feel so deeply sorry for both of these communities, but the Japanese are very hard working people and very well organised. They are certain to recover quickly.

Rescue Boat 2013 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 227 x 333 cm

Waves 2011 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 227 x 333 cm

Whale 1 and 2 1989 -- spray e óleo sobre papel craft/spray and oil on craft paper -- 2 x 22 meters -- coleção/collection, Utsunomiya Museum of Art, Toshigi

These two paintings done with spray paint on Kraft paper, each measuring 22 meters in length and two meters in height, were titled Baleia I and Baleia II (Whale I and Whale II), respectively. They were two symmetrical bodies cutout on paper, representing top views of a submarine and the bone framework of a whale, respectively. Visitors stepped down the hall as if they were wading in a thin, yet dense and cool ocean, between two figures that were nearly identical, despite one being organic and the other, technological. In this room, the artist proposed an uncanny, yet plausible approximation of two dimensions - two clearly distinct moments - of a same world. What is more, the news of someone having heard a “song” resulting from the combination of clicking sonar sounds and sea-mammal vocalizations would not come across as preposterous at all. In the long room, the somewhat rhythmic and melodious highpitched whistling slashed the heavy atmosphere as the visitor strolled along the image of the submersible vessel, the shape of which seemed to have been drawn from the whale across the hall. Incidentally, would not the prophet Jonah have been the first involuntary passenger of a whale-cum-submarine? Depicted as it was by the then young artist as a bone framework, the whale was to assert its precedence in time - a fact that in no way has hindered the perfectly harmonious coexistence of whales and submarines that now and then surface for a breath of air.

toppling futures agnaldo farias For the benefit of the forgetful reader, Oscar Satio Oiwa made his debut in the Brazilian art circles at the 1991 São Paulo International Biennial. In those days, the 25-year-old artist had just earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of São Paulo’s School of Architecture and Urbanism. His special room at the show was quite impressive, which is not the same as to say that it was fully understood: firstly, because in such particularly confused and compressed exhibition, the works could not be adequately viewed and appreciated; secondly, because at that time, just when the bursting movement known as Geração 80 (Generation ‘80s) had reached its turning point, the Brazilian scene was a lot more restraining than today: there were numerous prohibition signs, and young artists sought to validate their poetics by linking them to the few genealogical trees of Brazilian art; not to mention, of course, a few reputable international references, either established or emergent. As far as I know, in view of these facts and young Oiwa’s relatively “orphaned” work, no commentary worthy of mention was offered about either his long room (30 meters long, 10 meters wide), where upon entering the visitor was flanked by two huge “whales” rendered in metallic gray paint on the two longer walls, or the equally relevant creations by other artists.

Baby Whale 1992 -- técnica mista/mixed media -- 100 x 400 cm

Having been thus presented and compared, the two figures draw the viewer’s attention to the fact that just as whales are endangered species, so are submarines and other human-made, environmentally-unfriendly things doomed to extinction. As to their remains, who knows, some day will be retrieved from the sea bottom as fossils representing an extinct living group about which hardly anything is known at all. Oscar Satio Oiwa’s work is characterized by the perception of future as a dimension that resounds in the cities in the guise of ruin - as if emerging from the past to transform it into an archaeological site, where life circulates among fossilized remains. This trait is clearly evinced in the series of largeformat paintings on display at this exhibition, the artist’s second solo show held in São Paulo ever since he left Brazil in the early 1990s. Even the lighter scenes, or those featuring all-over, small multicolored bursts of flowers or something indistinguishable, do not cover up the visions of cities plunged in a dull, hom*ogeneous atmosphere, its buildings and other structures slowly decaying like water left in a flower vase overnight. Having earned a degree in architecture and, particularly, from a Brazilian school such as the University of São Paulo’s School of Architecture and Urbanism (FAU-USP), Oiwa nurtures a perfectly understandable relationship with the city. Whereas by taking in the past as an element that could no longer be discarded world architecture pioneered the criticism of the future pledge of modern thought - as “The Presence of the Past,” the 1st International Architecture Exhibition at the Venice Biennale (1980) curated by Paolo Portoghesi demonstrated, for better or for worse1 -, it was not until much later that this discussion was introduced in the Brazilian environment. To the eyes of Brazilian architects, the future was here, it had been brought by the hands of architecture in 1960, the year Brasilia was founded. If to Octavio Paz one of the essential implications for Latin-Americans was in the fact that during the first “three centuries the word ‘American’ designated an individual who was not defined by what he had accomplished, but for that which he was yet to accomplish”2, the “nostalgia for the future” that for a while permeated our cultural production was a result of this doom to be the historical project of European awareness. However, Brasilia put an end to this nostalgia. How could we define the paroxysmal boldness conveyed in a city plan drawn on white paper from a cross design that, according to its demiurge, Lucio Costa, rendered an instance of appropriation - a marker? Given this fact, it should not sound odd that several generations of architects educated to view their profession as an exercise trained on the future were to shun the past. In the pristine, ideal field of the blank paper, these designers delivered the most appropriate translations of this canon. A glimpse at designs by such masters as Walter Gropius, Mies Van der Rohe, Le Corbusier (the

Ancient Museum 1992 -- acrílica sobre madeira/acrylic paint on plywood -182 x 546 cm -- Toyota Municipal Museum of Art collection, Aichi

Mangrove 2008 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 227 x 333 cm one who came closest of all to Brazil), and even Oscar Niemeyer will ascertain the utopia of modern architecture, the founder of a supposedly more democratic space, due to being more abstract, rational, intelligible and universal. Even the briefest look at Oiwa’s artistic career clearly shows that if on the one hand at the school of architecture he nurtured a profound interest in the city and its buildings, on the other hand this city is far from being designed after ideal, utopian principles. Oiwa’s city is in fact an all-in-one city, one that not only contains all other cities, but also is laden with their past and present. Way before Oscar Oiwa’s understanding of city began to expand as the artist took to traveling the world beginning with Tokyo, the land of his ancestors, his notion of urban life was informed by controversial hard rock, ranging from Lou Reed of “Walk in the wild side” to the Sex Pistols and Clash; by the

comics of Robert Crumb and Moebius; by the dismal vision of Ridley Scott, of “Blade Runner”, and Terry Gilliam, of “Brazil” and “Twelve monkeys;” by the remote and steady murmur of street and expressway traffic “around our sleep, as of dead souls blabbing around the edge of a dream”, as Don DeLillo wrote in his “White Noise; by Anselm Kiefer’s revised version of the biblical rivers Tigris and Euphrates in his “Mesopotamia,” the highly dramatic painting he presented at the 1987 São Paulo International Biennial and that indelibly impressed Oscar Oiwa. In the work of our artist, these rivers are transported to the contemporary urban reality under the guise of a sooty and oppressive view of an overpass crossing above a thoroughfare. By the time the urban visions of Moebius led French filmmaker Luc Besson to shoot “The Fifth Element,” they had already inspired Federico Fellini, the Italian master who took life in provincial towns, devastated large-city suburbs, and the chaotic and extravagant highway to Rome, and successfully transformed them into poetry and dreamlike visions. And just as Fellini made movies out of his visions of circus, variety shows, and people and scenes that he turned into deformed, grotesque comics - thus once again demonstrating that the old chasm between high culture and low culture is an issue to be discussed by obstinate Adornian spirits -, so Oiwa starts from the iridescent, parodic and keenly visual realism of comics to address the city and the history of art itself. One example is the series “Masterpieces - The Ancient Museum Collection”, of 2000, in which the artist revisited masterpieces of world history of art from his own very personal viewpoint. Evidently, Oiwa does not draw from these cultural references only. By and large, his themes spring from expeditions to cities that he visits while exercising his nomadic spirit, i.e., his inclination for uprooting that makes him a citizen of all places. While strolling the city streets or flying the world skies, taking in the sights below like a bird’s-eye view, the artist becomes aware of the deep wounds that progress inflicts on the flesh of metropolises, on whose dilacerated margins the previously crystal-clear brooks have turned into streams of liquid and solid waste. Oiwa scrutinizes toppled buildings and their weather-beaten, forgotten rubble. He takes promenades through gardens with frost-burnt lawns and shrubbery, and fountains that issue streams of blackish liquid from which toxic vapors emanate. He takes tours of the garbage dumps that flourish on the city’s outskirts, at which animals and people scavenge for food scraps. As the artist emphatically and dramatically states through chunks of meat, entrails, and bones assembled in the form of continental maps, food is the driving force of everything. In turn, just about everything - from continents to merchandise in a shop display - may be reduced to food. The artist concludes that, in fact, the pure and simple quest for food is behind everything - from abject poverty to opulent wealth, from restraining pragmatism to dreams of freedom.

Not that cities are thus reduced. On the contrary, the artist views them as if through a device capable of recording present, past and future, all at once. Like the earth’s crust, the city is formed by the movement of its various strata, and Oiwa’s systematic resource to large-format paintings and installations are meant to provide the spectator - often from an unexpectedly lyrical vantage point - a notion as realistic as possible of an actual landscape, a view as spectacular as the glowing twilight observed in cities with greater air pollution, or the deadly bombardments aired on TV with voluptuous imagery comparable to that of a firework show. Finally, beauty is everywhere, even if it be a beauty impregnated with danger, as in the clouds of poisonous gas that yield acid precipitation. Yet, is this not the nature we have created? Ultimately, as the artist himself notes, everything dies before it is reborn, beginning with people “whose bodies turn into dust particles that are washed down streams, and then suspended in the atmosphere as clouds in the sky. In turn, clouds precipitate rain, and rain water eventually issues life.” So, there is nothing to be sorry about. Rather, in view of the falling rain - whether it be lethal flowers, snowflakes or pieces of charcoal -, of the crumbling world, and of cities that exhale colorful puffs, there will always be a chameleonic, cunning life delicately and yet firmly perched on a slender branch, accustoming itself to the environment no matter how inhospitable, and feeding on whatever it can find to keep on going a bit further. Agnaldo Farias University of São Paulo, School of Architecture and Urbanism

White House Garden 2004 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 227 x 444 cm

Ghosts 2008 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 227 x 555 cm

Five Boats 2009 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 194 x 391 cm -- coleção/collection Niigata City Art Museum, Niigata Floating Island 2013 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 137 x 178 cm

Invisible Sea 2010 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 227 x 333 cm

formá-los em arte do que apenas se lamentar pelo que aconteceu e pela alta probabilidade de se repetir no futuro.

Ghost Ship 2014 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 227 x 666 cm

clima tempestuoso: o sublime e as pinturas de oscar oiwa marilyn a. zeitlin A natureza tornou-se devastadora. O aquecimento global vem causando ondas de frio e calor nunca antes registradas, tsunamis, furacões, tornados, nevascas, queimadas, enchentes e secas que resultam em altos custos humanos, vidas perdidas, destruição do meio ambiente e ansiedade exacerbada. Realmente construímos um muro para conter a força das marés que ameaçam invadir Manhattan? Será que isso é possível em termos técnicos e financeiros? E todos os demais lugares que estão sitiados por causa de eventos climáticos cujas proporções são gigantescas? Lidar com o presente meteorológico e com o caos progressivamente violento e frequente que ele traz consigo é um novo desafio que se apresenta. E surgem também novas realidades com as quais os artistas têm de lidar. As imagens dessas catástrofes não podem mais ser vistas como metáforas para estados de espírito sociais ou pessoais, tampouco ser meros mecanismos que sirvam de base para enredos. The Tempest [A Tempestade] é agora de verdade, e respinga sobre todos nós. Oscar Oiwa retrata desastres – naturais ou causados pelo homem – há mais de uma década. Representações de violentos episódios climáticos correspondem a aproximadamente metade de sua produção; as demais obras retratam equívocos políticos e sociais e estados de calamidade. E a ele nunca faltaram casos ou inspiração. Mas ele não é engajado na mera cobertura. Seu trabalho é mais que simples protesto. Ele envolve o espectador na exploração desses eventos por meio da criação de obras visualmente poderosas e belas: por meio da evocação do sublime. E, gostemos ou não do ressurgimento do sublime, é melhor nos acostumarmos a ele. É pouco provável que os acontecimentos com os quais Oiwa e outros artistas lidam diminuam; portanto, é melhor dar-lhes um nome e trans-

Foi no século XVII que o sublime, em sua forma moderna, apareceu pela primeira vez, em um texto grego traduzido por um romano chamado Longinus . Porém, as características do sublime mais conhecidas entre os pensadores ocidentais foram sistematizadas quase um século mais tarde, na obra de Edmund Burke. Em Uma investigação filosófica sobre a origem de nossas ideias do sublime e do belo (1757), Burke identifica as características do sublime como sendo nossa reação a aspectos da natureza. Essas noções do sublime foram amplamente celebradas por artistas e poetas do romantismo. Uma característica central do sublime é que ele resulta no domínio da razão pela emoção. Acontecimentos ou visões provocam espanto ou medo em quem os vê. Esses sentimentos vêm à tona por causarem “assombro […] aquele estado da alma em que todo e qualquer movimento fica suspenso, com um certo grau de terror […]”. O medo “rouba da mente todas as suas forças […] e seu raciocínio” . Encontra-se o sublime em condições nas quais o controle humano é desafiado, e a escala humana, ultrapassada. Diz-se que o sublime é uma condição que desafia totalmente a representação. Burke se refere a um sublime que existe na natureza. Para nós, que vivemos no século XXI, a natureza está sendo comprimida para fora da nossa vida. Às vezes, penso nela como algo que vemos quando estamos a caminho do aeroporto. No entanto, em textos escritos mais recentemente, principalmente por Immanuel Kant, o sublime é abstraído da natureza para ser descrito como algo que ocorre na mente “onde a razão encontra o seu limite” e que pode ser provocado tanto pela arte quanto pela natureza. Uma das manifestações do sublime é o estranho, que sugere que algumas imagens ou experiências sejam familiares e misteriosas, ao mesmo tempo. Essa condição liga o mundo tangível com aquele que desafia a razão, e nos leva para um lugar onde ficamos perplexos ou assombrados pelo que vai além da compreensão racional. Recentemente, assisti a uma montagem de Parsifal, de Richard Wagner, realizada pela Metropolitan Opera de Nova York . Um dos desafios de produzir essa última ópera de Wagner é que o compositor evoca as emoções do sublime na música e confere forte espiritualidade e poder aos personagens, mas dá poucas indicações sobre como deve ser feita a encenação. É um caso clássico de irrepresentabilidade. A solução encontrada pela Metropolitan Opera foi criar cenário e figurino minimalistas para obter uma ambientação visual abstrata. No último ato, o que se vê é um palco que lembra o mundo devastado e as figuras desesperadas do romance The Road [A Estrada], de Cormac McCarthy : o término da civilização. Porém, enquanto Parsifal retorna para acabar

com a maldição que assola o mundo e salvar a Terra e toda a humanidade com sua pureza, Oiwa não tem muito a oferecer em termos de salvação explícita. Em vez disso, em suas obras que retratam desastres, ele nos mostra o belo, o que eleva a experiência do trabalho a uma espécie de transcendência. O abstrato funciona bem como meio de expressão do sublime, o que Oiwa explora mesmo em seus trabalhos figurativos. Talvez, entre as pinturas que compõem esta exposição, a expressão mais vívida do sublime seja Swirl (2012). A imagem de um tornado encontra-se com uma estrutura em forma de cúpula, cujo contorno forma um anel de janelas ou luzes. Enxergar essa cúpula como o Superdome, aquele abrigo falho para os pobres durante a passagem do furacão Katrina, em Nova Orleans, é apenas uma das leituras que se pode fazer dessa obra. Seria a Cúpula da Basílica de Santa Sofia? Seria uma nave espacial? Raios de luz partem do anel e iluminam o tornado. Estamos em um lugar coberto ou ao ar livre? A imagem é assustadora, em parte, por sua ambiguidade. A obra tem proporções sublimes; e a composição, simétrica com duas massas complementares concêntricas, amplia a energia descontrolada com a tensão entre a expansão e a compressão. A pintura é como uma iminente explosão. A ausência de especificidade – ou sua qualidade abstrata – torna-a sutilmente capaz de evocar o que quer que, no fundo, nos dê medo. Em Earthscape (2012), Oiwa expressa seu espanto ao ter uma visão aérea da Terra. Campos estão cuidadosamente organizados em retângulos e círculos. As sombras criam um ritmo de luz nas margens. A imagem é uma celebração da natureza moldada pela agricultura. A presença humana está implícita, e o mundo parece estar bem. A obra que a acompanha, The Accident (2012), retrata uma paisagem semelhante, mas Oiwa transforma essa versão em uma situação de transtorno e calamidade. Primeiramente, as colinas ondulam; as linhas de contorno enfatizam o padrão concêntrico da energia. Como um mar revolto, as colinas parecem estar batendo contra o penhasco localizado na extremidade esquerda do quadro, onde um caminhão não conseguiu terminar de fazer a curva na estrada e está pendurado, prestes a despencar. Oiwa, conhecedor dos mestres da impressão xilográfica de Edo, faz um tributo a Ando Hiroshige (1797-1858), ecoando as ondas do mestre do ukiyo-e e sua composição, em que uma diagonal divide o espaço do mar, mais baixo e distante, ou o vilarejo longínquo, e um caminho íngreme no primeiro plano . Aqui, Oiwa não resiste e se arrisca: a proporção sublime e o espanto pela visão aérea da Terra é agora o cenário de uma tragédia; além disso, ele amplia o significado ao nos lembrar dos perigos cotidianos que podem estar nos esperando na próxima esquina. A obra dramatiza a violação do previsível e apresenta uma janela para o lado obscuro da imaginação.

Flower (Rua São Bento) 2014 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas 138 x 274 cm

Em Rescue Boat (2013), a escuridão de Swirl e as ondulações de The Accident reaparecem como contexto para um drama. Ondas gigantescas ameaçam engolir um grande navio no qual um bote salva-vidas está pendurado. A luz emitida pelos faróis do barco de resgate, que parece minúsculo em meio às ondas e comparado ao navio fantasma, penetra a escuridão. Os feixes de luz, se observados da direita para a esquerda, formam as garras, ou a boca, de um monstro marinho. A pintura é repleta de imagens assustadoras, de uma energia selvagem, fora de controle e inexplicável. A única ordem é transmitida pelo barco de resgate. Seu percurso deixa como rastro um enorme círculo sobre as ondas. O barco de resgate é um salvador vindo de outro reino que se ergue sobre o caos do mar na tentativa de impedir o desastre com sua luz penetrante, sobrenatural. Em Ghosts (2008), Oiwa cria um místico pântano de entulho que observamos como se fosse um aquário. Sobre a água, fantasmas cujas silhuetas têm o formato da China e da Rússia. Ambos encaram o formato submerso dos Estados Unidos. À direita está um ninho no qual meia dúzia de pequenos fantasmas amontoa-se. Provavelmente, são parentes de personagens da Disney ou um coro grego, observando o confronto entre os poderosos. As figuras de cor negra lembram os fantasmas famintos (èguǐ) da mitologia budista. Esses seres não são totalmente humanos. Eles habitam um limbo, condenados a viver com um apetite insaciável. É fácil perceber o paralelo entre a insaciabilidade e a sede por poder geopolítico, uma situação fatal para os países que se veem no meio do fogo cruzado.

a mostrar cômodos decorados com bom gosto, com mobília típica da modernidade. Porém, não há ninguém em casa. Talvez se trate de uma visão pósapocalíptica mais benevolente, suave, mais atraente que as paisagens áridas; mas, considerando o tamanho da obra (555 centímetros de largura) e a incongruência dessas habitações minúsculas no meio da selva, elas evocam o que Sigmund Freud chama de “estranhamento:” “[…] tudo o que é terrível, […] tudo o que causa medo e terror” . Essa obra impregna a mente com sutileza e, portanto, penetra mais profundamente do que as mais explícitas Rescue Boat ou The Accident com suas narrativas de desastre. Nessa selva, Oiwa nos deixa quebrando a cabeça a respeito do que pode ter tirado os humanos do lar, e cabe a nós a tarefa de completar a narrativa.

Stairs 2 2014 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 227 x 222 cm

Cerca de metade da produção de Oiwa explora o elemento sublime na paisagem. A outra metade traz um olhar mais explícito sobre a loucura humana, no qual uma crítica está implícita, mas que também eleva o que parece ser uma narrativa oculta na realidade cotidiana e, frequentemente, urbana. Servindo de ponte entre os dois grupos está Five Nests (2012). O sublime na natureza surge na forma de uma selva densa, impenetrável. Oiwa pinta uma selva digna de Henri Rousseau, com palmeiras, samambaias gigantes e bromélias. Formas semelhantes a fitas se entrelaçam com troncos de árvores, costurando e unindo a composição. Ele anima a superfície com pontos dourados que personificam a luz brilhante, mas também parecem preencher a atmosfera com representações de energia. Os pontos são parentes dos kami que são, de acordo com o xintoísmo, espíritos que não são exatamente deuses, mas atores espirituais . Agarradas às árvores ou inseridas nos troncos, estão conchas habitadas por humanos em miniatura. Elas são recortadas de modo

Oiwa viveu boa parte da vida em movimentados ambientes urbanos: São Paulo, Tóquio e, agora, Nova York. Ele traz para sua visão e imaginação do mundo urbano sua familiaridade com histórias de fantasmas, filmes e quadrinhos de terror, e as notícias cotidianas. Observa as imagens urbanas de cima, como se olhasse a rua do alto de um prédio. Ele costuma enfatizar o que é ignorado. Em Yellow Elephant (2013), o ator principal de Oiwa é uma escavadeira gigante. Ela remove entulho do chão de um canteiro de obras em um rio. Atrás, há uma ponte em reforma. A água reflete as nuvens, a única ligação com o mundo natural. A escavadeira é o elefante. Sabemos que se trata de um elefante de circo porque, ao lado, está um tamborete redondo em cujo topo há uma estrela desenhada. A aproximação da escavadeira com um animal flerta novamente com o misterioso, mas, nesse caso, isso é feito de forma ambígua e com humor. Trata-se de algo estritamente fantasioso? A semelhança seria uma idiossincrasia associativa? Ou seria o elefante igual aos muitos trabalhadores anônimos, apenas uma máquina escravizada para beneficiar os outros? Oiwa estava em Nova York quando o movimento Occupy Wall Street buscava conscientizar as pessoas sobre a situação dos pobres e desprovidos. Em Occupy Everywhere (2011), Oiwa apresenta uma estrutura semelhante ao canteiro de obras de Yellow Elephant. Ele apresenta habitações improvisadas sob um viaduto por onde passa o metrô e ao lado do rio que conhecemos de Yellow Elephant. Nessa obra há duas residências. Ao fundo, está um local simples: a residência dos 99%. À frente, iluminado por uma luz resplandecente vinda diretamente de Guernica (1937), de Pablo Picasso, há um lugar parecido, mas esse é um elegante loft decorado que pertence ao 1%. Oiwa coloca os muito ricos e os desprovidos no mesmo lugar: ambos estão vivendo à margem, sob a ponte. O espaço do 1% é decorado com a mobília tipicamente moderna de Five Nests, a referência preferida de Oiwa à modernidade em geral, com todos os seus elevados ideais e consequências não intencionais. As dimensões e proporções da obra de Oiwa são parecidas com as de Guernica.

A obra de Picasso mede 350 por 780 centímetros, a de Oiwa, ¬¬¬¬¬¬¬227 por 444 centímetros. Outra referência artística é Keith Haring, que pintava nas linhas de metrô e nas ruas de Nova York. Aqui, a obra de Haring Crack is Wack (1986; restaurada em 2007) é, ao mesmo tempo, uma arte de guerrilha e uma peça de colecionador. Vemos também a Fonte (1917), de Marcel Duchamp, de volta à sua origem mais baixa, à sua condição de urinol, jogada em um canto feito lixo. Brillo Box (1964), de Andy Warhol, também volta às origens. Agora é apenas papelão, e seu valor artístico não é mais relevante. Oiwa está criticando a modernidade, questionando o sistema de valores de seu próprio mundo – o mercado da arte. Ele nos diz que o movimento Occupy nunca ficará sem objetivos, que o compromisso com ideais vai muito além de Wall Street e engloba praticamente tudo. Oiwa nos mostra que somos todos afetados pela disparidade na distribuição da renda contra a qual o movimento Occupy se rebela. Mas, acima de tudo, ele mostra a perseverança e a luta pela sobrevivência e os que fazem isso em ambientes parecidos com o que ele retrata, seja em Nova York ou nas favelas do Brasil. É o frisson do terror, do sublime que se torna palatável pela sagacidade do artista e pela própria beleza do quadro. Em Big Circus (2011), Oiwa transporta o elefante para um lugar totalmente fantasioso. Um elefante de aparência cansada divide a cena com um burro. A dupla corresponde a emblemas dos bastiões da política. O touro é de Wall Street, é o símbolo de um mercado financeiro agressivo, aquele que em 2008 trapaceou e pôs em risco toda a economia dos EUA. Uma águia, de aparência um pouco fatigada, sugere a liberdade. O elefante e o touro estão sem pele, e suas vísceras mecânicas, expostas. Todas essas criaturas – ou máquinas – encenam um drama maçante no mapa dos Estados Unidos. O plano de fundo é composto por formas construídas que se desintegram. Toda a cena ocorre no Picadeiro, o local principal de um circo. Oiwa expressa a repulsa que muitos americanos e outras pessoas sentiram e sentem pelo circo em que as principais instituições parecem ter se transformado. Nem mesmo seus pontos conseguem trazer muito otimismo. Trata-se de uma obra sagaz e terrível. Oiwa não desvia o olhar do mundo ao seu redor; ele nos faz ter sentimentos diferentes e pensar de maneira distinta sobre esse mundo. Ele usa sua consciência da imensidão do mundo, sua sagacidade, sua imaginação, sua tremenda habilidade artística para transformar o terrível em algo sobre o qual conseguimos refletir.

Landscape with moon 2004 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 227 x 222 cm

stormy weather: the sublime and the paintings of oscar oiwa marilyn a. zeitlin Nature has turned catastrophic. Global warming is producing record-breaking cold and heat, tsunamis, hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards, forest fires, floods, and droughts that wreak enormous human cost in loss of life, destruction of the environment, and heightened anxiety. Do we really build a wall to stem the tides that threaten to swamp Manhattan? Is this even feasible technically and financially? And what about all the other places under siege from outsize weather events? To deal with the meteorological present and the chaos that it has been delivering ever more frequently and ever more violently is a new challenge. It also presents new realities for artists to confront. The imagery of these catastrophes can no longer be seen as metaphors for social or personal interior states of mind nor as just plot-shaping devices. The Tempest is now an actual storm, and we are all getting wet. Oscar Oiwa has been portraying calamity – natural or human-caused – for more than a decade. Representations of violent weather events represent about half his output; additional works portray political and social error and calamitous states. And he has never lacked for instances or inspiration. But he is not merely engaged in reportage. The work evokes more than simply a hand-wringing response. He engages the viewer as he explores these events by creating visually powerful, beautiful painting: by evoking the sublime. And whether we like the reemergence of the sublime or not, we had better get used to it. The events that Oiwa and other artists confront are not likely to subside, and better to name them and turn them into art than to simply agonize over what has been wrought and the likelihood of future impending disasters. The sublime emerges in its modern form first in the seventeenth century in translation of a Greek text fragment by a Roman known as Longinus. But the characteristics that form the sublime most widely known to Western thinkers are codified nearly a century later in the work of Edmund Burke. In A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origins of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful (1757), Burke identifies the characteristics of the sublime as our reaction to aspects of nature. These notions of the sublime were widely celebrated by the artists and poets of the Romantic Movement. A central characteristic of the sublime is that it overwhelms reason with emotion. Events or visions elicit awe or fear in the viewer. These feelings are evoked by causing “Astonishment […] that state of the soul in which all motion is suspended, with some degree of horror […]”. Fear “robs the mind of all its powers […] and of reasoning.” The sublime is found in conditions that defy human control

Kita Senju 2008 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 227 x 444 cm coleção/ collection 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art collection, Kanazawa

and exceed human scale. It is often said that the sublime is a condition that defies representation altogether. Burke is referring to a sublime that exists in nature. For us, living in the twenty-first century, nature is being squeezed out of our lives. I sometimes think of it as what we see on the way to the airport. But in later texts, by Immanuel Kant most prominently, the sublime is abstracted from nature and is described as what happens to the mind “at the borderline where reason finds its limits” triggered by art as well as nature. A manifestation of the sublime is the uncanny, which posits that some images or experiences are both familiar and mysterious simultaneously. This condition bridges the tangible world with one beyond reason, carrying us to a place in which we are baffled or overwhelmed by what is beyond rational understanding. I recently saw Richard Wagner’s Parsifal produced by the Metropolitan Opera in New York. One of the challenges in producing this last Wagner opera is that the composer evokes the emotions of the sublime in the music and attributes profound depths of spirituality and power to the characters, but he gives little indication of how the staging should be realized. It is a classic case of the unrepresentable. The Met’s solution was to create a minimalist set and costumes to create a visual setting that is abstract. In the final act, we see a stage that resembles the depleted natural world and desperate figures of Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road: the endgame of civilization. But while Parsifal returns to lift the curse on the world as he saves the Earth and all mankind with his Christ-like purity, Oiwa offers little in the way of explicit salvation. Instead,

Hurricane Valley 2009 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 227 x 666 cm -- coleção particular/private collection São Paulo

within his pictures of disasters, he gives us beauty, elevating the experience of the work to a kind of transcendence. Abstraction functions well as a means toward the presentation of the sublime, one which Oiwa exploits even within representational works. Perhaps the most vivid statement of the sublime in the group of paintings in this exhibition is Swirl (2012). The image of a maelstrom is matched by a domed structure with a ring of windows or lights. To see this dome as the Superdome, that failed refuge for the poor in New Orleans during the debacle of Hurricane Katrina, is only one way to read it. Is it the dome of Hagia Sofia? A spaceship? Rays beam down from the ring to illuminate the maelstrom. Are we indoors or outdoors? The image is frightening, in part, because of its ambiguity. The painting is of a scale suited to the sublime; and the composition, symmetrical but with two complementing concentric masses, exaggerates uncontrolled energy with the tension between expanding outward and compressing downward. The painting is like an explosion about to happen. The absence of specificity – or its abstract quality – makes it insidiously capable of resonating with whatever strikes fear in your imagination most deeply. In Earthscape (2012), Oiwa expresses his awe at the sight of the Earth from the air. Fields are neatly patterned into rectangles and circles. Shadows create a light rhythm along the perimeters. The image is a celebration of nature

shaped by agriculture. Human presence is implied, and all seems fairly right with the world. The companion work, The Accident (2012), portrays a similar landscape, but in this version, Oiwa converts it to a site of upheaval and calamity. First the hills undulate; contour lines emphasize the concentric pattern of energy. Like a roiling sea, the hills seem to beat against the cliff on the left edge of the frame where a truck has missed a turn on a mountain road and is hanging on by a thread to avoid tumbling to certain destruction. Oiwa, familiar with the Edo masters of the woodblock print, pays homage to Utagawa Hiroshige (1797–1858), echoing the waves of the ukiyo-e master and his composition in which a diagonal divides a distant, lower space of sea or distant village from a precipitous path in the foreground. Here Oiwa cannot resist doubling down: the sublime of scale and awe at the sight of the Earth from above is now the setting for tragedy; further, he widens the meaning by reminding us of the dangers of everyday living that may await us right around the corner. The work dramatizes the violation of the predictable and offers a window into the dark side of the imagination. In Rescue Boat (2013), the darkness of Swirl and the undulating waves of The Accident reappear as the framework for drama. Massive waves threaten to engulf a large ship from which a lifeboat dangles. The rescue boat, dwarfed by the waves and ghost ship, has headlights that penetrate the dark. The triangles of light, if read from right to left, form pincers, or the mouth of a

sea monster. The painting is filled with fearsome imagery, energy wildly out of control and inexplicable. The only order is conveyed by the rescue boat. Its trajectory draws a huge circle over the waves. The rescue boat is a savior from another realm that rises above the chaos of the sea attempting to right the disaster with its penetrating, supernatural light. In Ghosts (2008), Oiwa creates a mythic swamp of debris that we see as if it were an aquarium. Above the water line, ghosts in the shapes of China and Russia face off silhouetted against the submerged shape of the United States. At the right is a nest in which half a dozen little ghosts are huddled. They are likely cousins of Disney characters and a Greek chorus, watching the confrontation of the major powers. The black figures recall the hungry ghosts (èguǐ) of Buddhist mythology. These beings are not fully human. They reside in limbo, condemned to continue living with insatiable appetites. It is easy to see the insatiability as parallel to lust for geopolitical power, a condition that is fatal to the countries that are caught in the crossfire of competition. About half of Oiwa’s output explores the sublime element in landscape. The other work looks at human folly in a more explicit way, implying critique but also elevating what seems to be a narrative hidden within the ordinary, often urban, reality. Bridging the two groups is Five Nests (2012). The sublime in nature appears as a rich, impenetrable jungle. Oiwa paints the jungle to rival Henri Rousseau, with palms, giant ferns, and bromeliads. Ribbon-like forms intertwine with tree trunks, and weave the composition together. He animates the surface with golden dots that embody limpid light, but they also

Mini Asian Kitchen 2013 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 111 x 227 cm

Icebergs 2007 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 227 x 444 cm coleção particular/private collection Tokyo

seem to populate the atmosphere with embodiments of energy. The dots are relatives of Shinto kami, indwelling spirits who are not quite gods but clearly spiritual actors. Clinging to trees or set into the trunks are pods within which are miniature human habitations. The cut-away views reveal rooms tastefully furnished with classic modernist furniture. But no one is home. Perhaps this is a kinder, gentler post-apocalyptic vision, more enticing than the barren landscapes; but in the scale of the painting (555 centimeters wide) and the incongruity of these tiny dwellings in the midst of the jungle, they evoke what Sigmund Freud calls “the uncanny:” “[…] all that is terrible, […] all that arouses dread and creeping horror.” Insidiously, this picture gets under your skin more subtly and therefore penetrates more deeply than the more explicit Rescue Boat or The Accident, with their narratives of disaster. In his jungle, Oiwa leaves us to puzzle what might have driven the human inhabitants from their homes, leaving us to complete the narrative. Oiwa has lived in intense urban environments most of his life: in São Paulo, Tokyo, and now New York City. He brings to his vision and imagination of the urban world his familiarity with ghost tales, horror comics and movies, and the everyday news. His point of view in the urban images is often from above, as if he is in an upper floor of an apartment building looking down on the street. He often focuses on what is overlooked. In Yellow Elephant (2013), Oiwa’s central actor is a giant backhoe. It is scooping debris off the floor of a platform built in a river. Behind is a bridge that is being repaired. The water reflects clouds, the only link to the natural world. The backhoe is the elephant.

We know that this is a circus elephant by the placement of a drum-like stand, topped with a star, placed to the side of the elephant. The animation of the backhoe into an animal again flirts with the mysterious, but here in an ambiguously humorous way. Is it strictly fanciful, the resemblance, an associative quirk? Or is the elephant like many faceless workers, just a machine anonymously slaving away for the benefit of others? Oiwa was in New York when the Occupy Wall Street movement was attempting to make the plight of the poor and dispossessed known to a wider public. In Occupy Everywhere (2011), Oiwa shows a structure similar to the construction platform in Yellow Elephant. He shows us improvised living spaces under a subway overpass and beside the river that we know from Yellow Elephant. Two dwellings are shown. In the back space is an unadorned place, the residence of the 99 percent. In the front, under a glaring light straight out of Pablo Picasso’s Guernica (1937), is a similar space, but this one is the elegant designer loft of the 1 percent. Oiwa places the very rich and the destitute in the same place: both are living on the margin, under the bridge. The space for the 1 percent is furnished with the modernist classic furniture from Five Nests and a favorite Oiwa reference to modernism in general, with all its high ideals and unintended consequences. The dimensions and proportions of Oiwa’s painting are similar to those of Guernica. Picasso’s painting is 350 by 780 centimeters, Oiwa’s, ¬¬¬¬¬¬¬227 by 444 centimeters. Other art references are to Keith Haring, who in fact painted in the subway system and in the streets of New York. Here the Haring painting Crack is Wack (1986; restored 2007) is guerilla art and simultaneously a collector’s prize. We see Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain (1917), here restored to its lowly origins as a urinal, tossed aside as junk. Andy Warhol’s Brillo Box (1964) is restored to its origins as well. It is now mere flattened cardboard, its art value no longer relevant. Oiwa is critiquing modernism, questioning the value system of his own world – the art market. He tells us that the Occupy movement will never run out of targets, that the compromises of ideals run far beyond Wall Street to encompass virtually everything. Oiwa is showing us that we are all impacted by the income disparity that the Occupy movement rebels against. But above all, he shows persistence to survive and those who do so in environments much like the one he depicts, whether in New York or the favelas of Brazil. It is the frisson of horror of the sublime made palatable by his wit and the beauty of the painting itself. In Big Circus (2011), Oiwa transports the elephant to a completely fanciful place. A weary-looking elephant is in the traces with a donkey. The pair are emblems of the bastions of politics. The bull is from Wall Street, the symbol of an aggressive financial market, one that in 2008 overreached and threatened the entire U.S. economy. An eagle, looking a bit frayed, suggests freedom. The elephant and bull have been flayed to reveal mechanical innards. All these

Pinocchio 1996 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 227 x 222 cm coleção particular/private collection Rio de Janeiro

creatures – or machines – are enacting a tedious drama against the map of the United States. The background is built up of constructed forms that are disintegrating. The whole scenario is taking place under The Big Top, a focal point of a circus. Oiwa is expressing the revulsion that many American and other people felt and feel about the circus that seems to have replaced major institutions. Not even his dots can bring much optimism. This is a clever and terrible painting. Oiwa cannot turn his eyes away from the world around him. He makes us able to feel and think in new ways about that world. He uses his awareness of a large world, his wit, his imagination, and his tremendous skills as an artist to transform the terrible into something we are capable of pondering.

Yellow Elephant 2012 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 227 x 333 cm

Earthscape 2012 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 227 x 444 cm -- coleção particular/private collection São Paulo

Swirl 2012 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 227 x 333 cm

The Accident 2012 -- óleo sobre tela/oil on canvas -- 227 x 444 cm

oscar oiwa 1965 born in são paulo lives and works in new york solo exhibitions 2015 Keumsan Gallery , Seoul, South Korea Connoisseur Contemporary, Hong Kong, China 2013 Clima tempestuoso, Galeria Nara Roesler, São Paulo, Brazil 2012 Traveling light, Shibuya Hikarie, Tokyo, Japão; Art Front Gallery, Tokyo, Japan A meeting of rabbit, cat, wave and nest, Gallery Caption, Gifu, Japan Keumsan Gallery, Seoul, Korea 2011 After Midnight, Galeria Thomas Cohn, São Paulo, Brazil National Art Museum, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Galerie Agathe Helion, Paris, France 2010 Figurative me, surrounded by an abstract world, Gallery Caption, Gifu, Japan 2009 Connoisseur Contemporary, Hong Kong, China Asian kitchen, BTAP, Beijing, China The dreams of a sleeping world, Takamatsu City Museum of Art, Takamatsu, Japan NEST, Galeria Thomas Cohn, São Paulo, Brazil 2008 Ophelio, Galeria Thomas Cohn, São Paulo, Brazil The dreams of a sleeping world, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Japan The dreams of a sleeping world, f*ckushima Prefectural Museum of Art, f*ckushima, Japan 2007 Fire shop, P.P.O.W., New York, USA North pole, Gallery Caption, Gifu, Japan 2006 Invisible reflex, Ikeda Museum of 20th Century Art, Shizuoka, Japan Gardening with Oscar Oiwa, Arizona State University Art Museum, Tempe, USA Caos, Galeria Thomas Cohn, São Paulo, Brazil 2005 Pooch, Galeria Thomas Cohn, São Paulo, Brazil Pooch, Frederic Giroux Galerie, Paris, France 2004 Fog, cloud & flower, Fuji Television Gallery, Tokyo, Japan Playback film, Gallery Caption, Gifu, Japan Beautiful world meat market, FORMAT Soho, New York, Japan 2003 Monte Pascoal, Galeria Thomas Cohn, São Paulo, Brazil 2002 Landscape from a cow’s view, Fuji Television Gallery, Tokyo, Japan Landscape from a cow’s view, Daiichi Seimei South Gallery, Tokyo, Japan

Noah Boat, Frederic Giroux Galerie, Paris, France 2001 Frontier, Gallery Caption, Gifu, Japan 2000 The Garden of Eden, Centre for Contemporary Art, Leiden, Holland Masterpieces, Fuji Television Gallery, Tokyo, Japan 1999 Gallery Montenay-Giroux, Paris, France Arca de Noé, Contemporary Art Factory, Tokyo, Japan Sunrise, Gallery Caption, Gifu, Japan 1998 Via crucis, part II, Contemporary Art Factory, Tokyo, Japan The Garden of Eden, The Ueno Royal Museum, Tokyo, Japan 1997 Crow's best, Art Gallery Artium, f*ckuoka, Japan Via crucis, part I, Contemporary Art Factory, Tokyo, Japan 1995 Divina Commedia, Skydoor Art Place Aoyama, Tokyo, Japan Flower, Yokohama Museum of Art, Art Gallery, Yokohama, Japan 1993 Urban cell, Skydoor Art Place Aoyama, Tokyo, Japan 1990 Brazilian exotic fruits, Kramer Galeria de Arte, São Paulo, Brazil 1985 Galeria Macunaíma, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil group exhibitions 2015 Rokko meet art 2015, Hyogo, Japan Water and Land Niigata Art Festival 2015, Niigata, Japan Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale 2015, Tsumari , Japan Collection Becoming, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo , Japan Takahashi Collection: Mirror Neuron, Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, Tokyo, Japan 2014 Cidade Política, Sala de arte Santander, São Paulo Chronicle 1995, MOT - Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Japan Terra do Sol, Gunma Museum of Art, Tatebayashi, Japan Japon, Abbaye Saint André, Centre d’art contemporain, France Mot Collection, Museum of Comtemporary Art, Tokyo, Japão 2013 The Pleasure of Contemporary Art, Takamatsu City Museum of Art, Kagawa, Japan Mindfulness!, Kirishima Open-Air Museum, Kagoshima / Sapporo Art Museum, Sapporo, Japan SITE=Hiroshima”, Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Hiroshima, Japan Peace meets art, Art Arch Hiroshima 2013, Hiroshima Prefectural Art Museum, Hiroshima, Japan Group 1965, we were boys, Kamada Kyosaikai Folk Museum, Kagawa, Japan MOT Collection: our 90 years 1923 – 2013, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Japan Setouchi Triennale, Takamatsu, Japan Unconsciousness of the city, National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, Japan

2011 The Group 1965, we are boys!, Kunsthalle, Dusseldorf, Germany The Group 1965, we are boys!, Art Arsenal, Kiev, Ukraine 2010 Flowers in Japanese art: 16th, 21st century, Iwami Art Museum, Shimane, Japan Flowers in Japanese art: 16th, 21st century, Setouchi International Art Festival, Ogijima, Japan Japanese Brazilian artists from the Akagawa Collection, Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art, Hyogo, Japan 2009 Sacred monsters, Tufts University Art Gallery, Medford, USA Animamix Biennial, visual attract & attack, Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei, Taiwan Animamix Biennial, visual attract & attack, Contemporary Art, Shanghai, China Animamix Biennial, visual attract & attack, Niigata City Water and Land Festival, Niigata, Japan 2008 Laços do olhar, Instituto Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo, Brazil Summer breeze; selections from the Contemporary Collection, Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, USA 2007 The (s) files, El Museo del Barrio, New York, USA Horizons, Old Simbashi Station, Break Station Gallery, Ueno Station, Tokyo, Japan 2005 Rampa, Arizona State University Art Museum, Tempe, USA Over the nature, Himeji City Museum of Art, Hyogo, USA The Group 1965 – project 40x40, Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Hiroshima, Japan Sight-cruising, Marugame Genichiro-Inokuma Museum of Contemporary Art, Marugame-shi, Japan 2003 Boa viagem, Utsunomiya Museum of Art, Tochigi, Japan Japan: rising, Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art, Palm Beach, USA Travelling: towards the border, The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, Japan 2002 Cyclical art site, Oita Art Museum, Oita, Japan Here is the museum, Shizuoka Prefectural Museum of Art, Shizuoka, Japan 2001 Vision, Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, Aichi, Japan Modern from Sumida, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Japan In search of form, Pusan Museum of Art, Pusan, Korea 2000 Vacant lot, Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, Aichi, Japan Echigotsumari Art Triennial, Matsudai Town, Niigata, Japan Gift of hope, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Japan 1999 Art is fun: angelic, devilish, or both, Hara Museum ARC, Gunma, Japan Museum walk workshop and exhibition, Utsunomiya Museum of Art, Utsunomiya, Japan 1997 Voice from Tokyo, Galeria Metropolitana de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

1996 4th Yokohama Biennale, Yokohama Museum of Art, Yokohama, Japan 1995 Vision of contemporary art, The Ueno Royal Museum, Tokyo, Japan 1993 Brazilian art today, Fujita Vente Museum, Tokyo, Japan 1991 21ª Bienal Internacional de São Paulo, Pavillhão Ciccillo Matarazzo, São Paulo, Brazil 1990 8º Salão Paulista de Arte Contemporânea, Parque do Ibirapuera, São Paulo, Brazil public collections Arizona State University Art Museum, Tempe, USA East Japan Railway Culture Foundation, Tóquio, Japan Forever Museum of Contemporary Art, Akita, Japan f*ckushima Prefectural Museum of Art, f*ckushima, Japan Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Hiroshima, Japan Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art, Hyogo, Japan Ikeda Museum of 20th Century Art, Shizuoka, Japan Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Japan Niigata City Art Museum, Niigata, Japan Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, USA Takamatsu City Museum of Art, Takamatsu, Japan The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, Japan Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, Aichi, Japan Utsunomiya Museum of Art, Tochigi, Japan Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidadede São Paulo (MAC USP), São Paulo Yokohama Museum of Art, Kanagawa, Japan 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa , Japan Gunma Museum of Art, Tatebayashi, Japan Montreux Jazz Festival Foundation, Montreux, Switzerland Delfina Studio Trust, London, UK Prince Albert Foundation, Monaco

oscar oiwa é representado pela Galeria Nara Roesler oscar oiwa is represented by Galeria Nara Roesler