CASTING THE INVISIBLE
YASUAKI ONISHI
MARCH 12-14, 2018 | ART DUBAI, DUBAI
The Mine presented the inimitable works of Japanese artist Yasuaki Onishi to Art Dubai’s new Residents section as part of his residency for Art Dubai 2018.
"Casting the invisible" or locating the pure essence of a simple, rudimentary material is the resounding mantra that rings true in his captivating practice. It is a phrase that he has engineered into a visual language of mesmeric artworks that combine industrial hardware and glue.
In the evolution of his landmark Plate of Pressures series, Onishi will present one larger and multiple smaller graphite and aluminum paintings: two-dimensional spaces that stand in contrast to the empty suspended sculpture that Onishi has devised in response to his temporary residency in Dubai.
Yasuaki’s sculpture is anchored to the diaspora of the city in which it was hosted and conveys spheres of interconnected metal wire that are simultaneously a twisted mass of communication lines gathering and dispersing and a nexus of coordinates for transient bodies. The glue that coats and clings to the skeletons of the paintings and sculptures becomes a renewed skin that not only charges the spatial depth of the pieces but builds on their dialogue with the transitory and very human traces that imprint a modern urban landscape.
Yasuaki Onishi (born 1979) is a Japanese artist who lives in Osaka, Japan, and holds a Masters degree in sculpture from Kyoto University of Arts. Onishi is represented by The Mine in Dubai, where he has had two solo shows, Vertical Volume, 2016 and Reverse of Volume, 2013. His practice is signposted by his inimitable vast, spatial installations, which have traversed the galleries of FRAC Centre, France, the National Museum of Art, Japan (NMAO), and the Islamic Arts Festival at Sharjah Art Museum, UAE, earning the artist multiple grants, including the prestigious Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award, New York, USA.
