HIROSHI OHASHI

Ohashi’s series garden from the year 2000 has sixteen sculptures of naked baby boys strewn around the room, some propped up or hanging by wires. He refers to each one as “bodies,” and they are identical, but the segmented, hinged limbs allowed for the variety of poses and expressions. Some look peaceful, others look like they are in pain, while one appears to be floating in water. Grim as the scene is, it remains on the playful side due to their resemblance to children’s baby dolls which are often abused in similar ways. Room (2001) almost seems like a sequel to garden. In it, eleven young schoolboys sit glumly on school chairs, and one is crumpled at the back of the classroom leaving his chair empty.

Ohashi also makes single sculptures of children and animals, usually with one defining exaggeration: a swan with a ridiculously long but elegant neck, dogs with tail so long they appear snake-like, a crying girl with a bee trying to fly away with her fringe, a boy with a giant stag beetle emerging from his midsection, and even a sculpture of just the top of a girl’s head with beautiful long braids. They are superbly crafted and finished with pale pigments that appear cracked, hinting at the natural wood beneath.

Young girls feature prominently in his oeuvre, such as drops (2005) where twelve toddlers—or “bodies”—wearing diapers are pulling on ropes, as pulleys above swing their bodies from side to side. The playfulness is enhanced by their bright red lacquer tongues sticking out, revealing a colourful glass marble in the centre. Natsuyasumi (2007), meaning summer holiday, turned the gallery floor into a sea or swimming pool with girls appearing to paddle on the surface of the floor in their own inflatable pool float. A more recent work of Ohashi’s is Flower Garden (2015) in which eight wooden (cypress) sculptures of young girls stand on the gallery floor gazing at the wall. From an adult’s perspective looking down at the top of their heads, they appear to be regular toddlers. However their relaxed arms hang down to their knees, and their heads are far out of proportion—up to one third of their total height. The larger heads allow for greater expression, yet they have a Noh-like quality; elusive and seemingly changing moods depending on the angle. One striking feature is the hairstyles. Each girl sports a different hairstyle for which Ohashi took inspiration from posters outside hairstylists, and each is coloured in a different bright block tones, reminiscent of anime and other modern Japanese pop-artists. The technique used, however, is again traditional Japanese lacquer, which he mixed with various pigments to achieve the anime-like colour and high gloss. Besides the contrasts with the high gloss of the lacquered hair with the powdery skin is the clothing which he also sewed himself. Each dress has a slightly different style and uses a different fabric, which was carefully chosen to match each sculpture’s personality. Unlike his earlier works which had identical sculptures in various poses, these figures are highly individualistic and eerily familiar.

Ohashi’s sculpture is both whimsical and deeply contemplative and based in a technique honed at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music where he earned his M.F.A. in 1999. Ohashi has shown his work at numerous museums and institutions including “Marunuma Art Park Exhibition”(2013), Saitama, “Toward the Sky”(2013) Metal Art Museum, Chiba, Hard Core Contemporary (2006), Miami, “The Rising Generation” Shibukawa Art Museum (2005), Gunma, “6th Exhibition of Taro Okamoto Memorial Awards for Contemporary Art” (2003) Taro Okamoto Museum, Tokyo, “New Collection Exhibition”(2003) Saku Art Museum, Nagano and “Gunma Youth Biennial Exhibition”(1995), Gunma Prefectural Museum of Fine Art, Gunma.

Text by Ruben van Mansum