Adjacent Existences
ob
March 10, 2023 – March 30, 2023
GALLERY HOURS :11:00 – 19:00
GALLERY CLOSED:
SUNDAY, MONDAY, PUBLIC HOLIDAYS
Opening Reception:
18:00〜20:00, March 10, 2023
Kaikai Kiki Gallery is pleased to present “Adjacent Existences,” a solo exhibition of ob’s works opening on March 10, 2023.
The last time ob held a solo exhibition at Kaikai Kiki Gallery was in March 2020. It was just at the time when the world was beginning to enter the Corona disaster. In this exhibition, her first solo show at Kaikai Kiki Gallery in almost three years, she will present the main visual 《Spring Breeze》 as well as a series of new works to be completed in time for the exhibition. Please come and see the exhibition.
Message from the artist
I think existences are like ripples in water.
Like being infected without realizing,
Beings cannot help but influence something, no matter how lonely they are.
Things that are next to you are the things that reflect you.
I am, someone is, something is.
We will never fully be one, but we exist in this world,
Happily, sadly, crowded together.
ob had her debut as an artist at the age of 18, so her career is long, and it has already been 13 years. In that time, she has produced 269 paintings and 252 drawings.During that period, I am sure there has been many twists and turns inside her, as well as many incidents in her life.
At first, she was active in Kyoto, gathering friends through Twitter and a social media site called Pixiv, and curated exhibitions that were like offline gatherings. The driving force behind her creations was to pick up something like a subtle flicker of the heart born in the conversations she had with her friends that she became acquainted with through the artworks posted on social media, She would draw sketches of such flickers, select the ones she was certain she could expand into paintings, and produce works on canvas. Later, she also participated in a group exhibition called the CHAOS*LOUNGE, and I met her artwork through this exhibition in Tokyo. After that, she started working with our gallery, and for several years she lived and worked at Kaikai Kiki Studio in Miyoshi, Saitama Prefecture, beginning her apprenticeship.
Kaikai Kiki had a gallery in Tokyo and Taipei at the time, and she became a very popular artists through holding solos shows there. She became the person of the time at one point, as she was making surprisingly large paintings in oil for someone in her early 20s. Around 2017, however, her works abruptly stopped selling. Yet even under such a circumstance, regardless, she kept on making more works.
Then in 2020, the pandemic struck. While everyone carried on with their life depressed, unable to go outside, I curated a group exhibition called “Healing” at Perrotin Gallery based in Paris. I tried to figure out what kind of images would be best to release people from feeling blue, and I included ob’s work from our inventory in the exhibition. I then received the request from the gallery for more of ob’s works. Taking this chance, I sent the list of several dozen pieces we had in our inventory, and the gallery said they wanted to take all of them on.
Once we swiftly sent them off to Paris, the gallery asked, “Don’t you have more?” ob’s art had a breakthrough during the pandemic. After that, with a great momentum, she held a solo show at a large space in Perrotin Gallery New York in 2021, which was a great success. And this time, it is her first solo show in Japan after a long while.
Her new works came in a very different style than before. The most notable differences are the shift in the expressions of the eyes, and that the coloring has become more monotone. I don’t know why her works have started to shift this way, but when the viewer stands in front of her work, they can link and align with ob’s thoughts about confusion of life with a snap.
Through the pandemic, people and the world have changed greatly. Please enjoy the exhibition of ob’s new works, which have taken in that big change and drastically changed in style!
Takashi Murakami
As precautionary measures to help contain the further spread of COVID-19, visitors are asked to wear masks and sanitize their hands before entering the gallery.
(Hand sanitizer is available at the entrance. Visitors without masks will be refused entry.)
Please refrain from visiting the gallery if you have any symptoms such as fever or cough.
Our staff will also adopt frequent hand sanitation and wear masks. The gallery will be routinely ventilated and high-touch areas will be regularly disinfected.
*Please check our website or Instagram for the latest information regarding opening hours, as the gallery schedule is subject to abrupt change due to unpredictable circumstances.
Thank you for your cooperation and understanding.