Tomoko Kashiki: Tomoko Kashiki
Ota Fine Arts Shanghai is delighted to present a solo exhibition by Japanese artist Tomoko Kashiki (b.1982, Kyoto). This travelling exhibition from the gallery's Tokyo space will feature 8 paintings and several drawings.
Tomoko Kashiki paints figures that are situated in spaces such as rooms and aquariums, often with strange and distorted perspectives. Her works are mainly painted with acrylic, and the process of sanding and re-painting on the painted canvas results in smooth surfaces and multi-layered coloured backgrounds. They are remarkable for their smooth textures and fluid lines, which at first glance could be mistaken for Japanese-style paintings. Kashiki's worldview, in which fear and beauty are inextricably linked, is further deepened in her latest works. By introducing uneven and rough textures on the smooth surfaces of the painting, Kashiki attempts to create a richer multi-layered composition.
In Ω (2024), the hill where stuffed animals and crayfish have come to view the cherry blossoms is mysteriously connected to the wooden planks of the floor, and a person is intently drawing letters on the floor. Catching wind from the fan, the hoodie worn by the person is depicted with transparent drapery lines that resemble the lines of a Buddha's drape. The smooth and lightly adrift texture of the drape is in contract to the stark and tense expression of 'the person who is drawing.' This theme of 'the person who draws' also appears in the Room with No Flowers (2024) and Goldfish (2024), and has been a favourite subject of the artist. In each painting, the figure - which is plausibly the artist herself - seems to shape the world around her as she paints.
In Room with No Flowers, a person is seen painting sunflowers on the floor and walls of a room. Knots in the timber floor planks are disguised as the centre of the sunflowers, as two petals are attached to them, they flutter here and there like winged insects or birds. This painting was inspired by a repost that Kashiki saw on X, 'AI can't paint a picture of a "room without an Elephant".' By painting a 'person who paints' the nonexistent, Kashiki alludes to AI not being able to depict 'lack' or depict something that does not exist.
For Kashiki, painting is about representing scenery that does not exist or objects that are unobtainable, as if they were real. She pieces together scenes from her personal memory, someone else's reminiscences or a book that she has read some time ago, and with a rich imagination, she expresses human feelings such as longing, desire, admiration, and cravings on the canvas. 'The painter is perhaps painting the lack itself,' Kashiki explains, and she believes that this 'lack,' which cannot be depicted by AI, is the true essence of painting. When we look at her paintings, we are taken into a mysterious space created by the 'person who paints' and it feels like we are standing in a landscape of sunflower fields and floor of letters.
