TOMIE OHTAKE

In the exhibition, paintings, and a sculpture relevant tounderstanding Tomie Ohtake’s production in the 1990sare presented in an arrangement that emphasizestheir cosmological analogy. Today, with the impact ofimages produced from the data collected by the JamesWebb telescope, which captures light in the infraredspectrum that is invisible to the human eye, we are livingin an era of renewing the collective imagination about theorigins, expansion, and limits of space: which createsthe opportunity to reinvestigate the role of the cosmic inOhtake’s work. Previous art critics such as Frederico Morais and Miguel Chaia have also pointed out this relationship,coining the term ‘Cosmic Tomie’.

In the 1990s, when Tomie Ohtake was already establishedas an important Brazilian abstract artist and a key figure forthe Japanese-Brazilian community, she transitioned fromusing oil paint to exploring acrylic paint in her work. Thismoment coincided with the transition from a creative processbased on studies with collages of cut-out papers to the directinvestigation of painting from synthetic forms: circles, spirals,ovoids, and amoeboids. In the same decade, Ohtake beganproducing sculptures as curved metal lines, modeled on ahuman scale from tiny wire models.

According to Paulo Miyada, ‘this is a moment when the artistrefines her attention to pictorial gestures in the superimpositionof layers and transparencies, with a collection of archetypal formsas her recurring object. In this sense, Ohtake moves away fromthe matrices of concrete abstract art and approaches, at thesame time, oriental traditions (especially ensō in Zen Buddhism)and evocative images of nature (especially the cosmos).’

Press release courtesy Galeria Nara Roesler