TEZUKAYAMA GALLERY is pleased to present Yoshiyuki Ooe’s solo exhibition, “My lips taste like Okonomiyaki”.

Born in Osaka Prefecture in 1980, Yoshiyuki Ooe is an artist currently based in Osaka. Since his debut as an artist, he has presented mainly self-portrait paintings.

He has been active overseas in Taiwan, New York, London, Basel, etc as well as in Japan.

Ooe has been creating works with an interest in changing the meaning and recognition of things by changing the perspective. By combining heterogeneous motifs, it is separated from its own context and transformed into a new image. Ooe’s three-dimensional works incorporate various motifs such as skulls, chicken heads, insects, and reptiles as metaphors. By carefully thinking about the relationships between the collage-like motifs, the works show connections to diverse interpretations and stories.

Since 2007, Ooe has presented mainly sculpture works, but this exhibition will be his first solo exhibition only focusing on paintings.

Since last year, Ooe has been working on paintings that feature motifs such as drawings taped on walls with masking tape and structures reminiscent of three-dimensional maquettees. However, rather than the motifs selected to talk about the artist’s introspective part, he explains that it is the point of view of Ooe himself, who maintains a certain distance from them and looks at the situation calmly. At the same time, you can read Ooe’s unique thoughts on his paintings from the screen.

For Ooe, the act of replacing the object that the artist sees with a single material called acrylic (or the minimum material that constitutes a painting) on ​​a canvas does not simply refer to the transformation of material, but to the drawing or three-dimensional maquette. By restructuring these things that are private to the artist within the framework of the painting, it is thought that he is trying to create a different perspective and interpretation by giving a visual language that can only be established within a controlled canvas.

In this exhibition, more than 30 new paintings will be exhibited. Please take this opportunity to have a look.