Continuing through October 12, 2014
It is a rare pleasure to see this solo show by Minoru Ohira, a San Gabriel Valley artist who crafts sculpture of quiet power using found objects and salvaged construction materials. He shows frequently in Japan, but not so frequently in the Los Angeles area. This Pasadena show features about a dozen works — five from his new “Landscape” series, which are multi-paneled, horizontal wall pieces, plus half a dozen floor sculptures and the large and rather epic “Santa Ana Wind.”
Born in Japan, Ohira studied at the noted Kanazawa City Arts and Crafts College and received an M. A. from Tokyo University of the Arts. Later he spent three years studying in Mexico before stopping by Los Angeles — and staying for the last three decades. (Today he shares a studio with his wife, artist Echiko Ohira, who will be showing her remarkable works on paper and with paper the following month at Offramp.)
Ohira’s work reflects a profound love of and respect for basic materials — materials often used for building, such as wood, copper, slate, and nails. In two of the “Landscape” series, for example, you can see scraps retrieved from building exteriors, with the soft pastel paint still on them. He’s reshaped them into narrow strips and carefully fitted them together. Each “Landscape” is composed of panels, from two to five, with each panel made up of carved, cut and sometimes colored wooden components, patina-ed copper sheets, or pieced-together slate. In one work, the colored strips of old siding on the left panel is paired with a right panel of unpainted wood upon which he has burned a pattern of short horizontal lines, some of them cut by a short vertical line. Intuitively, he’s created a visual rhythm in monochrome on one side, contrasting and complementing the colored pieces on the other.
There’s wonderful whimsy to Ohira’s various floor sculptures. In one series he has carved white wood into curved strips held together at the top by a nob. They look like gigantic brooms without the handle, or perhaps scrub brushes, with the “bristles” thick and turned out, as if ready to walk off like the brooms that come to life in “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” segment of the Disney film “Fantasia.” You remember, the segment when Mickey, as the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, turns brooms into walking, water-toting characters. These figures, too, have life and liveliness — and humor.
In another grouping, Ohira has carved and sanded wood into bulbous shapes, sometimes with incised circular patterns, and often burnished with graphite. One is gourd-shaped, and sits rather absurdly on its own skinny pedestal. It is completely covered by graphite, which is laboriously drawn on by hand in layer upon layer. This results in a surface with a black metallic density. Upon closer observation you can see the pattern of lines created by Ohira’s hand. “Santa Ana Wind” is a large sculpture that hangs on the wall, its curved movement emulating a wave. Here he used thousands of small chips of wood inserted into a curved wooden frame. The chips have frayed ends, the ragged edge of a harsh, hot wind. It evokes at once a sense of ruin and desolation, as well as the beauty in being a force of nature.
Published courtesy of ArtSceneCal ©2014
