Saturday, February 19, 2011

Asuka Ohsawa large drawings

Space Invaders (Panel #10), 2010.  Gouache on paper.
Space Invaders (Panel #11), 2010.  Gouache on paper.
Space Invaders (Panel #12), 2010.  Gouache on paper.
The above panels make up one continuous picture.  The artist recently had an exhibition of such large drawings at Richard Heller Gallery, Santa Monica, CA - see link for more pics. 

Toylike cuteness may be better at getting across social commentary.  The precise rendering is more akin to commercial or technical illustration than to the art usually found in children's books.  There's a nice balance between the menagerie of details and graphic boldness, especially of negative space.  Neat stuff!

Past and present works can be seen at the artist's website.

Nightmare of Little Red Riding Hood #1, 2008.  Gouache on paper.
I must say, I do like the past works more, particularly from 2007 and 2008.  But all in all, shows interesting possibilities, more perhaps than Roy Lichtenstein, Marcel Dzama, and Richard Scarry combined. 

Furthermore, I like the hybridization of many things, from Chinese scroll painting to Japanese woodblock prints, from Pop Art to Superflat, from Charles Perrault to Hayao Miyazaki etc... 

Gives me ideas for pictorial depictions of contemporized fables.