Shinji Ogawa leads a guided tour of his exhibition I Enter Every Reality

On Sunday 27 October at 12 noon Shinji Ogawa will give a guided tour of his exhibition I Enter Every Reality. After the guided tour, participants will be able to join the drawing performance if they wish. First Shinji Ogawa will do a live painting on a wine label. Then the viewers will be able to suggest a name that the artist, by sketching, will transform into a landscape.

The session will be conducted in Japanese with Polish translation. No need to pre-book. Please arrive at the MOCAK Reception 5 minutes before the guided tour (in the price of the ticket).

Shinji Ogawa (1959) – born in Yamaguchi, Japan. In 1983 he graduated from the Faculty of Artistic Education at the University of Mie. He lives and works in Nagoya.

The exhibition presents several dozen works from the years 2005–2019 – drawings, paintings and painting interventions on prints. The exhibition is divided into the following themes: utopian urban planning, Polish inspirations and reworking of traditional painting and woodcuts.

The artist plays with the viewer and the premise of a faithful representation of the world; he removes, adds, separates, supplements, and creates anew. With his works, he seems to be saying: Stop believing in the image. He stimulates the viewer’s perceptive vigilance towards representations that seem familiar and certain. There are several levels of manipulation. They are most difficult to see in the case of traditional postcards with photographs of places. Shinji Ogawa introduces delicate changes that blend into the image, rendering the entire representation suspect. The artist uses various sources and conventions of representation; he blends, deconstructs them, and achieves absurdity. In his works, European culture is filtered through Japanese mentality.