TOMOHITO USHIRO

Ushiro worked for many years in the forefront of digital media as an art director and held his first solo show as an artist, Pointed, at MAKI Gallery / Omotesando in December 2022, garnering attention for realizing an impressive transition from his earlier digital creations to physical works of art with a convincing materiality. The exhibition at Maebashi Galleria presents 8 works from Ushiro’s NEW NUDE and Vague Portraits series, both of which are part of the artist’s continuous endeavor of translating photographs into paintings, alongside a selection of sculptures from his Balloon series.

The underlying idea behind Ushiro’s paintings continues to be “the stages of collapse an image undergoes when organic curves are straightened through a reduction of points in the line.” By reducing the number of points on the curves which make up a complete, representational image, the artist blurs the specific meaning and function of that image and creates something entirely distinct from its original purpose. The NEW NUDE paintings are nudes based on pinups Ushiro found in imported pornographic magazines from the 1970s, such as Playboy, Derrière, and Bottom. In contrast, Vague Portraits takes prominent British photographer Stephen Gill’s portraits as its source material. Both series are ongoing projects that the artist intends to continue exploring and developing. In his work, Ushiro draws from the various cultures and trends that have greatly influenced his own life, many of which were imported to Japan from overseas. The painting process begins with first selecting an image, then digitally linearizing it to eliminate as much of its original function as possible. While the paintings’ basic components are based on a clear concept, the colors are airbrushed in multiple layers, creating deep, rich tones that balance the simplicity of the composition. Masking tape is used to delineate the shapes, and once the entire canvas is painted, each shape is blocked out again and sprayed with similar colors until it reaches a satisfactory tone—a process that is repeated many times. Although Ushiro strips down his subjects to their most essential visual elements, he successfully preserves the integrity of his paintings by endlessly layering and adjusting their colors.

The theme that underpins the Balloon sculptures, on the other hand, is the contrast between “soft things” and “hard things.” They depict a precarious situation where a balloon is trapped between rigid wood, squeezed so tightly that it may pop at any moment. In terms of pure physical strength, they are no match; the balloon will most likely burst at some point while the wooden blocks remain unchanged. However, until that happens, the balloon will still appear to be the primary subject to the viewer, with the wood existing merely in a supportive role. In this way, the series visualizes Ushiro’s dilemma about what true strength means in our age of confused values—where gossip is deemed more accurate than truth and flamboyance is equated with righteousness—and prompts the viewer to consider similar questions. The artist remarks, “I haven’t been able to fully figure it out, but I think I have some sort of addiction to stress. I feel like I always gravitate toward situations that put me under intense pressure. In that sense, the balloon may be me.”

Please take this opportunity to experience the unique vision and exquisite execution of Ushiro’s works in person at the gallery.

Press release: courtesy of MAKI